{"id":27,"date":"2017-12-30T00:55:42","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T00:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/?p=27"},"modified":"2017-12-30T00:55:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T00:55:42","slug":"3-spreadsheets-as-notebooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/2017\/12\/30\/3-spreadsheets-as-notebooks\/","title":{"rendered":"#3: Spreadsheets As Notebooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

My job requires me to manage spend and keep within budget allocations across a complex assortment of paid search campaigns. These budgets aren’t tiny (high 6 digits to 7 digits) and spend isn’t always predictable (dependent on customer demand). Missing our spend targets by 1%, or even 0.1%, can lead to all sorts of headaches (1% of $1 million = $10,000; imagine unintentionally spending $10,000 more<\/em> than you were told to).<\/p>\n

Given the above context, I think I\u2019m fairly justified in being anally retentive in my money math. I try to be triple-sure that I have all the right numbers in front me before I make a decision or recommendation. Over time, I\u2019ve come to treat spreadsheets as complex notebooks, combining tables, functions, screenshots, shapes and notes in a messy-but-intelligible complete representation of my thought process, verification steps and calculations.<\/p>\n

Below is a quick illustrative example I threw together to show how I treat a spreadsheet as a notebook.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Numbers may be better suited to moving around chunks of information on a \u201ccanvas\u201d of a spreadsheet:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Over the last year or so, I\u2019ve tried to stop being as inflexible as I used to be in the tools I use and the ways I use those tools. I\u2019m trying to be more pragmatic in order to get tasks done as efficiently and correctly as possible at the end of the day. This spreadsheet-as-a-notebook approach has certainly been helpful in my work and personal lives, especially when working with lots of information that needs to be understood and manipulated within a nuanced context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My job requires me to manage spend and keep within budget allocations across a complex assortment of paid search campaigns. These budgets aren’t tiny (high 6 digits to 7 digits) and spend isn’t always predictable (dependent on customer demand). Missing our spend targets by 1%, or even 0.1%, can lead to all sorts of headaches … Continue reading “#3: Spreadsheets As Notebooks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[19,18,20,21],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-efficiency","tag-excel","tag-note-taking","tag-numbers","tag-spreadsheets"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9vmTE-r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30,"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/30"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varunpramanik.com\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}