One of the best advice comments that I have ever received:
Learn how to be lazy
What was meant was to learn it once, and get a computer to do the repetitive work.
I was an accounting clerk for an engineering firm on First Street in Cambridge, Mass - literally down the street from Lotus headquarters - in 1982 or so.
We’d just gotten an IBM AT or XT, I don’t remember, and I took the BASIC books home and learned a little of that programming, and was writing a program to do our very tedious billing cycle.
A salesman from Lotus came in one day, and showed me the new program, and I set up a spreadsheet - engineers across the top, (about 25 or 30) and services along the side (about 30 or 40) and ran the spreadsheet.
“Out of Memory.”
The fellow looked crushed, and I handed the disk back to him.
“There’s a company going nowhere,” I thought to myself as he left.
From my DP101 instructor, circa 1978: “If you have to do it more than once, write a program.”
Been living that one ever since. :)
I agree. I'll work like a dog on a formula so that I never have to think about it again. And some of my formulas are in excess of 400 characters.
IOW: Work smart, not hard.