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Done in a flash

Done in a flash

How to build a vision board

September 22, 2022

Happy Thursday! 💫 Lately I’ve been wondering, “What would my 100-year-old self want me to do?” Matthew Dicks popularized the question in his book Someday is Today to encourage people to spend time on what matters. Would your 100-year-old self want you to binge Netflix? Or work on your novel? Would they want you to fight with your sibling? Or forgive them? Ask yourself this question when you need some perspective!

Let Me Fill You In 👀

If Excel made you get rid of every shortcut except for one, which would you pick and why would it be CTRL + E?

Introducing CTRL + E, a shortcut for Excel’s marvelous Flash Fill feature.

Flash Fill analyzes the information you input and automatically fills in your data when it recognizes a pattern. It takes what would’ve been a dull, time-consuming task and gets it done in a flash. It’s like an AI-enabled robot at your service. 🦾

Let’s see Flash Fill in action:

Say your boss hands you hundreds of team member emails. Your task is to separate the first and last name from these emails before the company-wide happy hour starts—in five minutes. 😰

No sweat. Here’s how you’d rock this:

Step 1: Write the first name.

Step Two: Underneath that cell, in the same column, press Ctrl + E.

Step Three: Marvel! Your data is formatted in seconds. Repeat those steps for the “Last Name” column and you’re all set. 👍

You can use Flash Fill for all kinds of data—grabbing dates and sentences or even extracting a company name from an email address.

Curious to learn more about Flash Fill? You can watch this video where I'll show you how it can help automatically generate names and initials. 💃🏼

What’s your favorite Excel shortcut? Hit reply or let me know here. I’d love to hear from you (and share your best hack in a future newsletter)!

Are You Seeing This?

When you read the opening lines of today’s email, you probably pictured yourself at 100 years old.

What accomplishments did you see your future self achieving?

Whether your goal is to retire on a tropical island, live debt free, or build a custom “puppy train” to take pets on adventures (like this guy), a vision board can help you manifest that goal, set your intentions, and take action.

A vision board is a collection (digital or physical) of images or objects that represent your dreams and goals.

According to Psychology Today, mental practices such as visualization can enhance motivation, confidence, and extraversion. Some of the world's top athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps credit their athletic success to visualization.

My partner Mike and I first built our vision boards in 2020. Together, we visualized the life we wanted, identifying relationship goals, dream cars, and houses. We used Pinterest to find images and Canva to mock them up before printing our vision boards out.

Here’s us proudly holding our boards. 🥲

Things began to change after we got clear on what we wanted.

For example, on our vision board, we had a picture of us holding hands in a black Porsche. You can actually see it in the top right corner of Mike’s board. Two years later, we were doing just that!

Want to start your own vision board? Here are a few tips:

🍂 Get comfortable knowing your vision board will change. When we first made our boards, our ideas of the future were limited by our imaginations at the time. We originally pinned “a house in Long Island” and “a promotion.” As you expand energetically, you’ll dream bigger—and your board will change.

📱 Put it someplace where you’ll see it constantly. The more you’re reminded of your goals, the more motivation you have to pursue them. Mike made it his iPhone background while I placed mine on my nightstand!

🗺 Get clear. The point of a vision board is to go from “I want success!” to “I’d love a home in ___, to make $____ a year, and to have ___ as my dream job.” When you know where you want to go, your path is a lot easier to follow.

Your vision board is an exercise in dreaming big (always a good skill to have!). It might take a few years for it to come to life but if you continue to stay motivated and take action, I guarantee it’ll take you somewhere.

And who knows? Maybe one day, you’ll get to a place where people put you on their vision board for inspiration. 😉

This website helps you create your vision board (and then ships it to your place!).
Over 2K people share the best advice they’ve ever received in this thread.
It’s not what you read, but how. This video shows us how to read effectively. 🤓
Is your Excel moving at a snail’s pace? 🐌 "Shape shifters" might be why.
Here’s a fab guide that shows you how to get your first 5,000 Twitter followers.

Here’s some Thursday motivation: Failure is a benchmark of progress. 💪

For example, weightlifters train until failure because it can boost muscle strength and size. Surfers consider falling off their board an artform. In the words of big-time surfer Laird Hamilton, “wiping out is an under-appreciated skill.”

After all, if you knew you were only 100 failures away from success, wouldn’t you celebrate each and every one?

Stay Excelent,

Kat