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How’s your relationship with social media?

Strained? Same. Here’s how to fix it.

Hi, hey, hello! Fun fact: February is one of America's least favorite months. Sure, it’s technically the shortest, but post-holiday blues and “the air is so cold it’s hurting my face” weather can make it feel like it’s lasting forever. Fear not—spring is around the corner and the sun is finally setting after 5 pm! 🌷

Wait, How Old Are You Again?

Time for a pop quiz! 🤓 Without pulling out your phone calculator, tell me: If someone was born on January 17, 1982, how old are they?

A. 41B. 42C. 46

If you’re good with numbers (and don’t panic when asked to perform some quick mental math—an elite skill) you chose A. But chances are you’d rather default to your calculator and save time—so here’s a tip to help you do just that in Excel.

This tip is handy for lots of scenarios. For example, say you have a list of customers’ birthdays and want to sort them by age range so you can better understand your audience.

Or, imagine you’re organizing the company’s happy hour and need to double-check interns' ages so you can avoid awkwardly rescinding any invites.

Using this Excel tip, we can convert a date of birth into an age—and it’s easy!

Step 1: Type the function =DATEDIF into your desired cell followed by the cell that contains the birthday you’d like to calculate (in our case, that’s B2 to calculate Beyoncé’s B-day).

💡Excel Tip: The =DATEDIF function calculates the days, months, or years between two dates.

Step 2: Type in “TODAY(),” followed by “Y” (which stands for “years”) and then close your formula.

Our formula is now signaling to Excel to calculate the number of years (“Y”) between the birthday (“B2”) and today’s date (“=TODAY).

💡Excel Tip: The =TODAY function returns today’s date.

Step 3: As always, the most satisfying part—hit enter and copy down!

This tip isn’t only for birthdays! If you’re a project manager, you could use this formula to calculate how much time has passed between project phases and new due dates (you could even swap the “Y” with “M” for months and “D” for days)!

Or, you can always use this tip to calculate Bey’s b-day (not a bad trick to have up your sleeve).

Have an Excel question? Hit me with it! I’d love to answer and help make your life a little easier. ✨

How to Have a Healthy Relationship With Social Media

Raise your hand if you’ve ever opened Instagram for “just one second” and poof! 37 minutes have passed and you’re late to [insert commitment you totally forgot about here].

When it comes to our relationships with social media, it’s complicated. I used social media to build Miss Excel, but it gets the best of me all the time. Just the other day I lost 45 minutes browsing The RealReal’s Instagram. (They do have cute clothes though 😎).

But as someone who’s been told they “have the healthiest relationship with social media they’ve ever seen” (thank you Nilay Patel!), I have two mindset reframes that help me use social media the right way.

1️⃣ Become aware.

The first step to redefining your relationship with social media is recognizing that it’s designed to keep you scrolling for as long as possible.

Contrast social media’s intention with your own—to be in control of how and when you pay attention. Your focus is a critical skill that can shape your entire life.

When I feel myself falling into an endless scroll, I step back and ask myself this: “The phone wants me to stay on as long as possible, but is this activity helping me shape my dream life?”

2️⃣ Expanders, not competitors.

One of the worst aspects of social media is our tendency to compare ourselves to the people we see online. If I see someone who starts triggering those “Why can’t I have what they have?” thoughts, I challenge myself to find at least one thing we have in common.

Maybe it’s something as simple as being from the same hometown or both enjoying dancing. But setting that line of “you and I are not that different from each other” helps me see them as an expander (“I can be like you, too!”) instead of a competitor (“I’m not like you”).

Ultimately, social media isn’t just good or just bad. With some mindful reframes, it can go from a destructive time-suck to an incredibly useful tool.

P.S. Nilay and I also chatted about how to use social media to create (instead of just consume). If that sounds interesting to ya, let a girl know and I’ll write all about it! 🤳

Just a reminder that you don’t need to wait for a “special occasion” to use that nice perfume, olive oil, bubble bath, or whatever else you might be saving for the right moment.

Today is special, too. 🤗

Stay Exceling,

Kat