Getting creative (when you have no time) 🎨

Hey there! This week, I had a realization: What if I just started my New Year’s Resolution…now? By the time 2024 rolls around, I’ll already be ahead and my goals will feel way more achievable. 💪

Want to join me and jumpstart your 2024 goals? 

Spend just one hour with me in my free data cleaning and new Excel functions class. After attending, you’ll save hours in your week, get a massive confidence boost, and avoid #REF! errors for good. 

There are only two slots left, so register now: 

• December 15 at 12 PM EST 

• December 15 at 3 PM EST 

Sign up right here. Here’s to not waiting until New Year’s to level up! 🥂

^{Can’t attend live? No worries! When you register, you’ll get access to a 48-hour replay.} 

The Data Cleaning Tip You Can’t Live Without 

Imagine you’re in charge of your company’s email marketing campaign. 📧 Your boss sends you a list of first and last names. Your task: Separate them into columns so you can export the row of first names to send personalized emails. 

How you do this? Easy. With a little something in Excel calls Text to Columns. ✨

As the name suggests, this tool separates text into multiple columns. Aside from email marketing, it’s handy for when you get your data from an external database or import it from other file formats (i.e. CSV) as data can get real clumpy.  

Ready? Here’s how you’d clean up this data in 60 seconds:  

💡 Excel 101: A delimiter is the symbol or space which separates the data you wish to split.

P.S. Want to learn more data cleaning tips just like this one? I’ll be sharing tons in my free online classes tomorrow! Don’t forget to sign up before it’s too late (these are my last classes of the year). 

Passing The Mic To You 🎤

While I have you here…I’d love to know what you want to see more of in The Workbook next year!

Do You Really Not Have The “Time” To Be Creative? 

Being creative comes easily to some people. For the rest of us, it’s as hard as squeezing out the last dollop of toothpaste. 🙃 No matter how hard you press, barely any ideas come out. 

Before Miss Excel, I used to relate to the latter. Creativity? Never heard of her. 

I had a demanding 9–5 and was traveling every other day. If I wasn’t in an airport, conference room, or hotel bed, I was with family and friends, or fast asleep. In short: I convinced myself that I had no “time” to be creative. 

When I got the idea for Miss Excel, I realized things had to change if I wanted the business to succeed. For people to watch my TikToks, they couldn’t just be informative—they had to be fun, unexpected, and have a creative flair. 

But when I first sat down to come up with content ideas, it was h-a-r-d. I would sit, staring at a blank screen for an hour before any ideas trickled out. “What if I just wasn’t born creative!?” I remember thinking. 

I’ve since learned that’s not true—and it’s not true for you, either. 

In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Everyone is born creative. Take this study by Dr. George Land and Beth Jarman: On average, 4-5-year-olds scored 98% on the “Creativity Genius” scale. Translation? We’re naturally creative. We don’t have to take any time to learn to be creative–we just need to channel our inner child. 

This realization was a huge unlock when I was juggling my 9–5 and Miss Excel. I discovered that I could channel my inner creativity while doing almost anything…it was just about shifting my perspective: 

• ➜ Organizing my room became “creating a new habitat.” 

• ➜ Writing an Excel formula became “turning scraps of messy data into a succinct poem.”  

• ➜ Deciding what to eat became “craft a meal with three random ingredients in your fridge.” 

By getting creative in all these areas of my life, ideas started coming to me way faster. I’d get content ideas in the shower, right before bed, or in the Zoom waiting room (IYKYK). 

Creativity is always right within your reach; you don’t need “time” to find it. Rather, it’s a question of looking at the world through an altered lens—the eyes of your effortlessly creative 4–5 year-old self. ✨

• “How did I live before this?!” — You, after learning these four data cleaning tips. 🧹

• If you don’t enjoy your job, here are seven tips to help you swap out careers. 

• “A tiny dose of imposter syndrome gets the adrenaline going” and more lessons on turning self-doubt into self-belief.  

• Want to snap out of autopilot mode and slow down time? Follow these four steps.

Thank you for being here! Here’s one last mantra to remind you that there is no better time than today to start accomplishing your goals: 💭

“Now is the time, the time is now.” 

Stay Exceling,

Kat