How to have fewer meetings 🖥

Plus: Hide sensitive information in Excel

July 27, 2023

Hey! I’m hosting a ✨free ✨ Excel class today through Saturday on XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP, and VBA Macros. In just one hour, you’ll…

✔️ Become a pro at automating spreadsheets

✔️ Learn how to save dozens of hours down the line

✔️ Feel more confident at work (so you can go for that promotion 😎)

You can join us right here! But if you can’t make it during those times, no sweat. I’ve set up 48-hour replays if you sign up for any date!

How To Hide Secrets (in Excel)

We all have them.

Secrets. 👀 Whether it’s what you did at last year’s holiday party or [insert irrational fear here], we all have sensitive information we’d rather not share with the world.

We can’t control whether people will spill our secrets. But, we can censor confidential data in Excel so it doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.

This is an Excel skill you need to know:

  • 🏠 If you handle personal information (e.g., SSNs, email addresses, home addresses, employee IDs), censoring data prevents identity theft or maintains privacy.

  • 🤝 Sharing your company’s Excel files with other businesses? You’ll need to censor certain data to avoid sharing trade secrets.

  • 💼 If your company collaborates with third-party vendors, you might have sensitive data (such as sales numbers) you don’t want to share.

Let’s try this out with a real-life example, shall we?

Imagine your boss asks you to hide everyone’s employee ID number.

Here’s how you’d do it:

Step 1) Start with the LEFT function and insert the cell with the data you’d like to hide. In our case, that’s B2 

Step 2) Add a comma and how many characters you want visible at the beginning of the cell. Close the parentheses. We want the first six characters visible, so we now have =LEFT(B2,6)

Step 3) Add &” and asterisks (asterisks represent the hidden characters). Close with ”&. Our updated formula is =LEFT(B2,6)&“****”&

Step 4) Insert the RIGHT function. Then select the same cell (e.g. B2), add a comma, and how many characters you want visible at the end of the cell (I want two!).

Our final formula is =LEFT(B2,6)&”****”&RIGHT(B2,2)

Voila! Now your sensitive data is nice and secure. 😎

Help, I’m Drowning in Meetings

Do you ever find yourself in a virtual meeting and wish you could just…

Same! 😅 If there’s one thing I remember from my early corporate days, it’s that your girl was in meetings. A lot of meetings—to the point where I couldn’t focus on the work I was hired to do.

It turns out I wasn’t alone. 🤷‍♀️ Research shows that 70% of meetings prevent employees from working and completing their to-do lists, and 92% of employees see them as costly and unproductive.

Fortunately, I was able to reduce the number of meetings by roughly 50% (and get way more done) through some tough conversations and boundary-setting.

If you’re in this third stage of career development (here’s what I mean ⬇️) I have some tips for you.

1) 🏃‍♀️ Schedule them all at once instead of throughout the day. “Kat, why would I ever voluntarily do back-to-back meetings?!”

I know, but hear me out! Those one-hour (ish) time slots in-between meetings are rarely productive. It’s hard to do deep work when you need 23 minutes to get into your flow zone.

Knocking them all out at once gives you more free time later on to sit down and focus.

2) 🙅‍♀️ Block your prime time. Figure out when you’re most productive. Then, block this slot on your calendar (so it auto-declines meetings) as a recurring event. Set this for as many days as you can around the meetings you have to go to.

3) 🗣 Be honest. If meetings are severely impacting your ability to work, it’s time to chat with your manager. It might sound intimidating, but remember…

→ The manager is here to set you up for success.

→ It’s up to you to advocate for yourself and your quality of work.

And hey, if all that fails, you can pitch using Shopify’s meeting cost calculator to your company (half-kidding). That 30-minute meeting with three co-workers? It could cost up to $1,600. 🤯

It sounds wild, but Shopify’s ethos is that meetings should be deliberate and clear—and that’s something I can definitely get behind. 💯

Last week I asked you: Team XLOOKUP or Team VLOOKUP? Here’s what our poll had to say:

Team #LOOKUP forever. ❤️

But if you aren’t sure how either work? Don’t worry. My free class hosted today through Saturday covers them both (and so much more!).

Stay Exceling,

Kat