I love Excel, even though I’m not all that good at using it.
I love Excel, because it does work for me: executing elementary school arithmetic at scale; evaluating a set of sales of data; suggesting formulas to solve my questions.
But I also love Excel because it forces me to do mental work I’m not used to.
When working on a complex operation in Excel, I often find myself trawling the menagerie of websites and online forums dedicated to Excel—with their endless unspooling formula recommendations and thoughtful exposition of what, exactly, something like SUMPRODUCT actually does.
This stuff is great.
But it also makes my brain tired.
Excel activates a part of my brain that lies dormant most of the time. To spend a few hours wrestling with Excel tires me out like a full work day would.
I’m used to fuzzier work: stringing words together or assembling a layout. This work doesn’t have an answer. There’s better and there’s worse. But no draft of cover letter language is spitting out a #DIV/0! error.
When I get an error in Excel—or the wrong answer—it goads me on. Keep going.
Taylor Coe 