Tables and Imposter Syndrome

This is UnPivot, the show for Excel and Power BI users and anyone else who loves discussing data. This is episode two. I'm Wyn Hopkins. I'm Mark Proctor. I'm Sue. And I'm Charles Mayle. Oh yeah, Sue Bayes. You've matched it up already. Welcome everybody. No edits. I'm just Sue. I'm just Sue. She's just known as Sue. Like Madonna.

so first of all let's start with a question on everyone's mind after episode one uh mark have you been for another run i have i have i've done i've done two so it's only a week since last last episode done two yeah well done well done i'm not asking the other two about their running because it just makes me i haven't i've had 17 guinnesses since we last spoke but i haven't been on a run

than this morning preparation for this is that is that on target yeah i have obviously i have done a half done some five ten k-ish things so yeah any any other random news before we start talking data giles i've got an 11 month old golden retriever staying with me at the moment so the dogs are with you

The dogs are with me, together with my three-year-old Vizsladore. So I am stretched as they pull. And the golden retriever just stops in the middle of the road or in the middle of the pavement to watch people. yep they're crazy dogs are you all are you all dog people oh yeah i've got pepper yeah i prefer dogs to humans for the most part to be honest

Don't get me started on that because I can talk for an hour on that. Right, not dog chat. That's the topic of this episode. Running, dogs, yoga, swimming, sea swimming. So wait, have you not got a dog? You left out? No. You left out for the dog chat and the running chat. No running chat, no dog chat. Maybe I just need to buy a dog that takes me for runs and then I can be part of the gang. Well, that would help. That's my idea with mine. Okay. Yeah.

I've got news. I've got a massive tattoo on my leg as of this week. I've turned 40. I think I mentioned last week that I've hit the 10th year of my midlife crisis. So I've got a tattoo. Went to get the Comrades logo, came out with a big epic Viking warrior halfway up my left thigh.

how do they upsell you on that they upsold me so easily and it really hurts just just for anyone that doesn't know really does hurt wow how long did that take there's one i was in there one day and then i've got at least another full day so it's about it's pretty much half done so it'll probably be about 15 16 hours in total i reckon but um but yeah can you stay still for that long i couldn't stay still for that long yeah it's hard work uh

But anyway, I don't want to distract for too long, but you said, do we have any random news? In my head, I've become at least twice as cool as I was last week now that I've got a cool tattoo. Go on then, Win and Mark, random news.

I'm not sure I've got any. I've got nothing this week. I painted my windows at the weekend. I was saying to win beforehand. So before, when you used to do power crew magic. um i used to listen to win every time i had to do diy so as soon as we

We had our episode last time, and I was like, I'm going to listen to our own podcast, which I apologize, sounds quite sad, but I was there doing DIY because Wyn's on a podcast. It's almost like that's what DIY does. So if Wyn stopped doing podcasts... nothing will get done around my house i know everything oh uncle win maybe i should be sponsored by i don't know what's what a home base yeah bunnings in australia so encouraging diy around the world so right i want to get into some chat

let's get let's get into some proper stuff um so i did send out a little link to preempt you all about this one this was a video that um and a blog post that john acampora did which is a little bit controversial, I would say. Now, for those of people who aren't aware of a John, 10-year MVP, he's got a YouTube channel called XL Campus that's got like 560,000 subscribers or something crazy.

so you know and he's a really good guy i've met him a whole bunch of times actually a little anecdote before we get into his his post first time i was at the mvp summit so i was a newbie meeting all these new people

and there was a discussion going on about YouTube. And I think, you know, my channel had, I don't know, a thousand subscribers and maybe my most liked video was 2000 likes or something. And they were talking about content and I was like, oh yeah, you know, anything over seven minutes, no one watches that. And John, who sat there next to me, chilled back sort of Californian guy, just sort of nudges his laptop computer around to me and points to his 15 minute pivot table video that's got...

14 million views or something crazy and it's like all right yeah sort of know it all win um put in his place quite quite kindly by John to be honest um but anyway um so John's post was and let me just read the heading. I've stopped recommending this Excel feature, which in itself, beautiful clickbait title title. Very good. Okay, awesome. I clicked on it.

But what are you saying is essentially, what was that? You read it as well? Yeah, it's cool. So what he was essentially saying is that he doesn't recommend Excel tables anymore, which is

you know so much which is controversial right but he goes in to say that he basically doesn't recommend them in the circumstances where there are inexperienced excel users because the structured table references are confusing to those people. They prefer A2 to A10 as a reference rather than, you know, table one sales in square brackets. So I get it.

but I don't agree with it. What's other people's thoughts? And this leads on to some other discussions as well, but just purely on tables to start with. Thoughts?

Do you want my BI perspective? Because I use Excel primarily with Power BI or data sets. So for me, I don't like Excel unless it's in a table because... tables feed into power bi it makes data types data types data types it makes the data types the same it makes every column have the same type of data types it has such a it's structured and it's so when win sent it to me i went well i disagree has to be a table and then he went and i you know said about the title

And he said, yeah, but this is, you know, this is John. And then I thought, yes, it is. And he's training newbies or newer people more than me. And then I thought back to when I started first.

looking at tables and I couldn't I was like why is it doing that and I couldn't understand why it was doing different things instead of the simplicity of the column reference so that was my thought so I would still prefer tables but I can understand why yeah I've spoken to John about this in person in previous previous years and I think

I mean, his view is primarily around the structure of references are confusing for people who are, who haven't seen them before. But I think the, in terms of, if I think about the thing that I focus on most in terms of kind of. how we automate our processes inside Excel. If you start from like the most basic level of automation which is I have a formula when the numbers change it recalculates that is like the basic level of automation which anyone could do but any formula that you then have

The next level is, well, I need my formula range to expand or attract when I get more data or less data. So tables are the thing that then gives you like level one is I have a formula. Level two is I have a table that expands and retracts when I have new data. Level three is then I get my data.

from power query so you've kind of got this progression where that it relies on tables because of the expanding and contracting of of those data ranges so without tables you're you're kind of stuck with having to undertake manual actions so

I think they are a critical thing in almost everything we do. And as Sue said, the fact you've got a structured form, you can't have repeat column names, all of those things that get... excel closer to a structured data has got to be a has got to be a good thing so this there's so many good things about it and the i mean he raised the point in the video about structure references and when you start referencing the header row and other stuff

that the syntax gets confusing and it it does but to be honest most of the time you're just clicking with a mouse or it's or the intellisense pops up so therefore it's not it's not a big issue but i would say i would i wouldn't give up on tables for

for anything because they are they're fundamental to absolutely everything we do and i i would i would agree i you know if you think of how excel's changed recently as well like to me xl tables is it's like a hygiene factor like it's it's just a fun building block it's very different to something like lambda i can completely understand why in lots of cases trainers might look at a group of people and go

All right. Do not worry about Lambda. There are ways you can get around doing things. It's just going to confuse you. For me, if you didn't teach tables, you'd probably be promoting worse. Practices, because what would you people would start leaning on, you know, you reference an entire set of columns to make sure you cover future increases in data.

um yeah i mean i again like i know of john's work i hugely respect him and uh but i just i wouldn't agree with you know not teaching tables i would i would force people if they're not up to that skill level i would be pushing them to get up to it as quickly as possible

And personally, I think in training, I think actually if people started with tables, but if you then showed them the A1 cell referencing, people would be like, what is this? And you'd be like, oh, it's... it's how we used to do things and so i think they'd be surprised because the ultimately if you've got something a table that is a structured object it's a named item if you've got things just on the grid i think i refer to them normally as disparate items placed together in a grid structure

Which is what they are, because Excel doesn't know that A1 is related to A2, and it's got no idea about relationships or anything. They're just things placed near each other. Just that as an object is, and the fact that that exists is fundamental. I remember Oz, Oz du Soleil, this is probably back in the Excel TV days.

I wish I could do a good impression of Oz because it would sound, it would come across and it would sound awesome. It would carry a lot of weight and a lot of presence. Unfortunately, I don't have his richness of voice. So therefore, it's not going to sound quite as good. When he first encountered tables, I think his phrase was, why would I put a table on a table? Because ultimately, if you think Excel is a grid and it's...

That's a table. Why would you put a table on the table? That doesn't make any sense. So I think there's a conceptual element there that a lot of people don't understand why you'd even need one. So I can understand that point of view. Why do I need a table? Excel is a table. But once you're over that and you see all the benefits, they're just fantastic. In R, we have a thing called tidy data sets. And a table means that your data is tidy.

Each column is a data type, you can't have a number in a date, you can't have text in a date, and the amount of work I have to do in cleaning up data is when you have the wrong data type in the wrong column. So having a table encourages that tidiness. Yeah. And Google Sheets has just added tables. They have. And they do enforce.

types in columns, I believe. David Benheim just did a talk for us on tables. And I tell you what, they look good. They are pretty impressive. They've got some features that Excel doesn't have.

think they also can um you can use dynamic arrays within their tables um so the table doesn't expand and retract so ultimately it's just filling filling cells so i'm not sure that their dynamic arrays inside tables is the is the answer i haven't seen it in use he said it and i was like oh that sounds good so so my um sort of experience of teaching tables with people and i just i love them and

I joke to people that if they don't have a table in their file, I judge them because I just think... I'm not saying they don't know what they're doing, but their knowledge is probably limited if they haven't used tables yet, because why wouldn't you use one if you knew about them?

um but there's always that thing of showing the auto filling of formulas which impresses people you go right you type a formula in and it just automatically fills in you insert a row it's automatically filled in so beautiful consistency safer and all that sort of stuff and then you'll send you'll put their hand up and go but what if i just want to put plus 10 in this cell and you go this is why you need tables because you shouldn't do that

You should never do a plus five in a random cell somewhere. This is why Excel gets a bad name, right? If you want an adjustment, add a column called adjustment. and type a 10 in there and have another column that is the final adjusted number. But don't disguise your numbers by typing them in some random cells. So yeah, I'm but I'm a massive fan. And I just know the best thing before power query came along.

I think tables were the greatest addition ever and I would I would recommend them sort of to anybody I think the form the argument that the formula is confusing I don't know dollar signs in cells do beginners really understand what the dollar signs are doing and stuff when you're dragging formula i think that was one of the hardest things to to to get over was you know the relative and absolute uh referencing

I do have quite a lot of sympathy, by the way, for people that have never had any Excel training. I do have sympathy for the fact that when you first see things like structured referencing... it's not an easy thing to absorb and get up to speed with but i still think my very strong position with tables and lots of other things would be like all right it's not easy but

suck it up like what everything else you need to learn is going to get harder if you're stuck here and you give up now i mean you're you're not going to get very far as a modeler or an excel pro i don't think yeah have i just gone harsher than everyone else i was thinking when when i when i quote for work if i know it's all coming from excel

then the price goes up. Because you know it's going to be random all over the place. Not always, not always. But if it's coming from Excel, then there's like little, OK, we could have anything here. Giles, in terms of financial modeling with tables, because I view tables more as a data analysis piece. Yeah. Because in terms of financial modeling.

are you just are you storing them as like inputs or your if you've got like a rolling forecast that's where your your actuals are coming into how how do you use them in a financial modeling type context I'll try and give you the short answer to that. Otherwise, I'll use up the whole hour. But for lots of financial modeling, you wouldn't use tables at all, really, because all of the drivers or almost all of them would just be inputs, hard-coded inputs in cells.

I think dynamic arrays are way more exciting for the future of financial modeling than tables. Where you would see them used a fair bit is, as you said, when you're bringing in actuals data, you'd be using Power Query a lot. And then depending on what you do with Power Query, I would still default to you export your tidy data back into an Excel table in the grid.

and you can lean on it that way i totally appreciate you could shortcut that and show it in a pivot table but actually um i think for a lot of financial modeling what we're talking about is probably a little bit alien to financial models because you just don't deal with data that much So actually, in that context, you're using tables in more of a data analysis piece that then brings into your calculation chain for your financial modelling. Yeah, okay.

basically yeah there's a lot of nice automation you can do around actuals and forecasts and you know rolling models where you're bringing the last actuals period forward a month yeah then the outputs of power query in your tables is really useful For me as well, the killer features with tables as well as the auto expanding and all that sort of stuff. Number one, if you build a pivot table, I think it should always be a table at the data source because...

You add more data to your table and the pivot table will just pick it up. You know, and again, when they mention that to people, they go, oh, I never have to click change data source again. You go, yeah, you don't have to. And then the other one is how the. the name references are just beautiful for x lookups or index match the the you know it's not look up d5 to d7 and bring back e7 to e12 it's like look up the cost center code

bring me back the budget column. And it's all there in the formula, which is again, once you know it, and I guess back to your point, Giles, once you know it, it's a much more useful language. But that sort of then leads me to another question.

when you're building stuff, and this might be Excel or Power BI, okay? How much should you consider the end users expertise, if they're paying you to develop something for them? What's a great question. It's a good one. Sue? Got a thought? Yeah, lots. So the temptation when you build.

is to do something all horses and whistles and singing and dancing and it can do this and it can do that and i can do this for you and i can drill down and i can do but people are fairly new to power bi um i i always find it's really useful just to start very very simple start you know it's just like when i say to people it's just like powerpoint just because you have transitions it doesn't mean you have to use it so Whoever is going to use your report, it's absolutely vital, critical that.

they are happy using it. Not you. And I was in a call this morning with some users and they were asking questions. And as they were asking questions, I was changing the names of things to relate to what they, is it this or is it this? Let's change it so it makes it explicitly clear to you, not me because I'm not going to use it every day, but to you what the meaning behind this visual is and how it works.

From the front end perspective, it's critical that it's built for your users, not you. From the back end perspective, it depends whether you're maintaining it or someone else. Well, actually, no, it doesn't. naming all your steps, putting comments in, being kind to your future self and documenting and making it really, really clear, not just what's happening, but if you're putting in custom steps for a specific reason, the reason why.

And what you can do in paraquery, and sometimes I might do, is put in the purpose of this query. This query filters on this specifically because. So you write the business logic to explain.

the steps that you're carrying out to to filter your data so always always always thinking about who is going to be looking after and look after yourself if it's you or whoever takes it over but make those reports completely completely user based but so my pushback or my question follow-up question oh i love pushback yeah just to be controversial is look you're building something because somebody else either hasn't got the time to

Yeah, it doesn't know how to. Yes, it doesn't. It doesn't want to. So should you it is there like is there things you shouldn't use? Because the end user

doesn't understand them there. Should you not write m code because the end user only understands the button clicks? Where does where does your line get drawn between and that's just one of John's arguments in his post was that the end user was getting confused by the formula so therefore he wasn't going to use the formula even though it was would have probably been the safest approach to use document document i mean the great thing with power bi if it's in dax

You can write in the description exactly what it's doing and why it's doing it. If you're putting it in M, you can code and you can comment and you can put on the properties. You can put comments in for every single thing. So there should be no. Even if you are handing it over to somebody who doesn't know, and some of my reports, they don't know how it's built, but they know if they looked into it and somebody else took it over, they would be able to understand the why.

So documentation and DAX allows you to write descriptions and Power Query allows you to document everything. And my big thing is data modeling. I love data modeling. and so the tabs at the bottom of the data modeling i split out every fact table or

you know, so that people can see very clearly what dimension tables are filtering it and how they relate. So it's about trying to make it as clear and concise as possible. So they might not understand, but you can put... and actually wouldn't that be really nice if you could write put a little text box in in the domain you know the ones at the bottom of the modeling if you could add a text box in there i wonder if it's in the properties

That would be quite nice. Can I disagree as well now? With me? Great, great podcast material. We'll disagree with each other. I guess it's just argue. Always gets more views. Yeah. I don't like saying it's arguing. so i i thought john's post to me i i have to go back and read it i thought it was more in the context of training people um from a consultancy perspective uh i i probably would have a slightly different view and i've had it before when i was consulting you know

yeah i would take into consideration some end users and end clients level of skill and knowledge i think it depends in financial modeling it would probably depend on you know is this like a transaction model that you're running once and owning and then it's done is it an operational model that you're going to hand over and suddenly this finance team is going to be left with the responsibility of using it time after time so i mean i have dumbed down certain things for clients

after quite a lot of attempting to get them further up to speed but if there's real resistance like no we don't like it got to do this um eventually i you know as a consultant i was like okay well you're paying me i'll do exactly what

you've asked me to do. I'm not saying it's necessarily the right thing, but I have done that. I would say it depends on the context in which you're operating so if if someone has asked you to build something that they can then use and adapt later on then yeah you need to take into account their current skill level but

If you're building something that is a solution in and of itself, effectively, you're building some kind of small form of application. Whether that's a good word or not, I don't know. So as long as there are... as long as the users can interact with the inputs in the right way and get the outputs in the right way what happens in the background they almost they don't care

Therefore, I almost feel like you can build the background however you like. If we take Excel or Power BI, they're not building all that code in the background in a way that I could understand it. Because although I'm the end user,

I wouldn't even know how to. I wouldn't know how to look at the source code for Excel or Power BI or any of that. So therefore, they're not writing the code so that I can understand it. And if we apply that in a similar way to our own solutions, it's kind of... if someone's never going to see or interact with that piece then as far as I'm concerned I can use whatever features I want as long as they're in line with their current versions but

And hopefully that if another consultant, somebody else comes along later on, that they can then understand what I've done because I've tried, I've still applied good practices. I've still applied the right techniques and I've tried to structure things in the right way. So it's clear, but I wouldn't.

cap it at the the person who i'm designing it for i wouldn't cap it at their skill base unless of course it's the case of they want me to design it so they can then use it later on so if it's a skill and time issue

I would not design it at their level. If it's just a time issue, they just need someone to get this done, and then they're going to take it on, then I'd approach it differently. Sue? Yeah, absolutely. You would never care. what you do because that's what you're being paid for to give your technical expertise um but what i would say particularly with power bi is it's very iterative

So I start off very, very simple and validate the data, tables, et cetera. And so you're almost going on a journey with your users of the reports where... you know this i mentioned this point where you're constantly okay let's check this is this right is this what you're looking for even if it's 10 15 minute bursts so they're

they're in essence building the report for you and in power bi it's different in that you have the visual element and the data modeling element and the data modeling element most people aren't aren't as au fait with building a model as they are in adding visuals so it it's it's different in that way so i would never ever cap the the modeling having sort of been in the world of both power bi and excel now i think there no one's with power bi because it is newer and people are learning it sort of

possibly the right way now, sort of actually having some training and other things. There isn't the expectation that they're going to be able to do the stuff that you're being paid for to do. But I think with Excel, there's this expectation that people know Excel. And if you build something, an application, and Excel is, we mentioned this last time, you are programming, as you said last time, Sue.

It's a programming platform, right? It is a blank slate and you can build some magical stuff with it. And if you build an application, there shouldn't be an expectation that people can go in the back end and mess about with it.

which as Mark said, it is just you are building it. I've had clients who I've built stuff for, that's taken three months to build like a, you know, some sort of oil and gas costing model thing. And then somebody else has come in a few months later sort of started the role and they've you know the inputs work the outputs work they're like oh it's a bit complicated

can we just make it a bit simpler and it's just like well it took me three months because of you know the complexity of the situation and if it was some other application built in c-sharp they wouldn't have asked the question

Yeah. Or if it's Power BI, they wouldn't have asked the question. But because it's Excel, people have this thing of, well, I just want to tweak it because I've always been able to tweak other Excel stuff. I think that's been sort of my experience with that. I think that's a fair point. Yeah. There was a previous role that I worked in. I built this application that was for me to control my month end so that we can do things a lot faster. I was in that role for three years.

you know it went through various processes and it built up over time and eventually I left that role and I handed it across to somebody else and it's a case of you just change these few cells you click run and bang everything happens and it should be a glorious thing About a month later, someone came up to me and goes, oh yeah, your spreadsheet's broken. I was like, what do you mean my spreadsheet's broken?

It's my baby. I've built that. I walk up to their desk. I'm like, well, it's broken. They said, well, when I click run, it brings up this error. And I looked at it and there was a whole load of BBA code. And I'm like, where's the rest of the code? And they said, well, we deleted it.

and it's like if it's like you can't you can't stop people from here's the thing that works you just fill in the parameters on the front sheet and click run and it will go and then oh no i need to look at this code and tinker around i've got to change it so people are desperate to make changes in excel even if they haven't got a clue what's going on i've got a good story

uh again a quick client story and it's not really technical excel but um you know i've had the benefit of listening to lots of data viz experts uh over the last few years so um when i did a consulting gig a few years back it was i turned the the existing reports and outputs they had into what i thought was a much better set of outputs with you know looking at the principles of

you know data viz hierarchy and visual order and you know white space and all of this stuff and it was perfectly in line with all of the best practice principles of database and i shared it and they absolutely hated it and in the end they were like no we want you to put it all back

to what we had and i was like yeah but your what you had was you had like all this blue fill everywhere it's like all i'm looking at is the border i'm not looking at the numbers of the graphs and in the end they just said we don't like what you did it's like okay

I'll do what you've done then. That was it. What do you do? They didn't like it, even though it was in line with all the principles. And I didn't, I didn't fight that one too hard. It's funny. I, you know, when I got, when I. started off I was wasn't sure what to do because I was on many years lecturing and do I go into training or do I go into development and I chose development because you know I just love it and I've had enough teaching and lecturing but

one of the things i found was that trying to sell excel training or advanced training or beginners actually beginners training to people because everybody thinks they're advanced And I remember I worked in one place and we put on some Excel, the office Excel things. And quite a few people failed and they were horrified that they failed because they say, I work in Excel all the time. You work in one small area of Excel all the time and you're very, very good at that.

it's it's excel has just changed and it's changing at such a phenomenal rate that an advanced excel user i wouldn't class myself as an advanced excel user and i know i know my way around excel but i'm not advanced because It's such a powerful, powerful package. Yeah. People don't recognise that. When I first started Excel off the grid, I'd have given myself a solid 8 out of 10 at Excel.

then then after you start blogging and people start adding comments and you start reading a bit more and you think oh maybe i don't know as much as i thought i did

And there's this world that's significantly bigger than you ever thought. So when I started Excel off the grid, I was eight out of 10. I would now give myself a five. So that's what eight years worth of... of working hard and trying to understand it does it makes you worse at it because you realize you had no idea at the start and i was probably a one but i i didn't have a clue

By the way, two things. Number one, right now is the moment in episode one where we started talking about the main topic. Just thought I'd point that out. So we've done incredibly well for episode two. Is that not a perfect segue into it?

we have like imposter syndrome and and something like that on the on the list win just thinking when Mark's talking about like rating yourself yes yeah yeah rating yourself and I and I had a similar sort of experience to Mark is that you know I started for access analytic 17 years ago which is a fault which was a essentially an excel consulting firm coming from I came from a bank where I was the excel guy in finance

yeah and i would have given myself i i said i knew about 80 of what excel did and then after sort of like six months of working with these guys i was like

Okay, I now know about 20%. I think after 17 years of daily Excel, I now know, I put myself back up to about 70% and then they keep adding stuff. So I'm just gonna... if i stay at 70 i'm doing well because there's getting more right and this is your point just saying totally how do you keep up and what what do you do and are you falling behind and there's this

You see everybody else posting. So what's your thoughts? Have you got thoughts, Giles? Yeah, I mean, just to add to the self-rating thing, I think everybody goes through this journey. Years and years ago at the start of my career, when I started thinking I was brilliant at Excel, I would have put myself in there like eight, nine, nine and a half. Look at me with my amazing 10 line formulas. Aren't I clever?

um and now at most i would put a seven because i think i'm definitely above an average i put myself slightly above five but i always think there's more that i need to learn

I'm further behind. The gap is bigger of stuff I don't know than it is what I know in that top half. So somewhere between five and seven. I've literally just come off a call today with... a client uh that is having the same issue like the the overall standard of where their team is is probably quite a shock to them when they learn about modern excel and what you can do now versus what you could do two years ago

and this goes back to the thing with with john's tables i mean god if you if if you can't get up to speed with tables god help you when you get into power query and the data model and python in excel i don't think we all need to be experts in all of them but you've got to be kind of across enough of them to be able to say all right for this thing

power queries the right solution and actually for this thing python and excel might be a good option or excel might be the wrong tool completely um i don't even remember what your question was did that help well yeah so really Whether it's Excel or Power BI, here's a question for each of you, just with a yes or no answer really, or two questions. Do you feel like you're falling behind and that other people know more than you?

and is it a problem sue what do you think uh no and do i feel like no is it a problem no do you want me to rationalize Let's just go around the room, as it were, Mark. I'll say yes, I am falling behind, but no, it's not a problem. Cool. Giles? Yes, I am falling behind, especially when I watch anybody doing the Microsoft Excel World Championship stuff. It would be a problem.

if uh if i allowed it to mentally but i'm actually really leaning into publicly saying i'm falling behind because not that i think i've got a particularly loud voice but it's just like look people that are in the space if everybody is admitting themselves like yeah look it's really hard to keep up i'm not i'm not here blagging that i'm across everything hopefully that's a good thing yeah i think it's just

i'm i'm falling behind but slower than most and i'm happy with that yeah that's yeah and it's sort of and i yeah it's it's uh so when you say so going back to sue when you say you're not falling behind what's what's your rationale there then um i'm not falling behind compared to the majority of people because i am living and working and breathing in data and i'm developing and i everything you know in life really

Well, not everything. You've got stuff outside, but I'm living and breathing it. And there are lots of people, the majority of people don't get to spend as much time in Power BI as I do. So I'm not worried that I'm falling behind because. I know how strong I am compared to where I was when I started. I know that there were things that I don't know, but I'm not overly worried about it because...

and I've been thinking about this since you mentioned it, is because I know where to go to find out. So when you first start... And it's probably even harder now because there's even more content. But if something pops up and it's got your name on it, Wyn, then it's like, OK, Wyn's done something on this. So it filters it for me.

if something comes up and it's got Brian Julius. So I know the people that talk to my brain that explains things in the way that... i understand and and i think that's the difference is how you understand it and and i i'm always on linked linkedin for me is really good for for techie stuff because people just post things and i'm like oh yeah so i i sort of know where to go so um i think matt allington said it

once about dax he says i'm at peace with dax so it seems like that i'm at peace with where i am because i know where to go and i've got a solid enough foundation to build on yeah because i i find that you write that that knowing where to look yeah and knowing you know that something's possible or you're you're aware of it yeah and

As long as you can look back at yourself a year ago, and think that you know more and you're better than you were a year ago, then that's really the only benchmark that counts so that you have because Twitter and LinkedIn and other places

you're just judging yourself against 25 other people all the time. And 25 other people, I see Mark posting and you posted and everybody's doing stuff. It's like, oh, how do they know that? How do they know that? And, you know, and you start to sort of, you know, feel a bit, you know, inferior to it.

but you're judging yourself against 20 odd other people so that's i think that's where my brain sort of settled down a little bit yeah when i started getting a bit worried about it yeah yeah yeah i think the once you've got your

Once you are on LinkedIn or wherever else and you're comparing yourself to others, you have to remember that each of those people is only covering potentially one thing. Therefore, they're an expert in that one thing. I remember when I first became an... an MVP and I joined up to the Power BI email distribution list and there was a significant person in the Power BI space who asked a question in there that I knew the answer to.

I didn't respond equally. I was like, how do you not know that? And the answer was they specialize in these things. So if you compare yourself to 25 other people, you're comparing yourself to 25 experts. in one thing so you're never going to be the amalgamation like you can you can you can be general in which case you know a bit of everything they know or you can specialize in one thing in which case you're one of those 25 for for somebody else

yeah and in terms of because in terms of whether you whether you're falling behind and whether it matters the so over the over the various years I've kind of built up frameworks as to how we solve problems and how we think about them and how we approach them. So when new tools come along, so when like Python and Excel came along, the question was, how does this fit into my framework? It's not whether...

is Python Excel, it's not even do I need to know this if I don't know it, is it a problem? If it doesn't fit into my framework of how we solve problems, then it's almost an irrelevance because it's kind of like this is... This I've I've determined this is the optimal way to approach these types of scenarios. So when something else comes along, if it doesn't fit into that optimal way, I'm just going to ignore that because it's not.

it's not relevant to what i do if i see somebody then using it in the context i think actually that would be useful i'm happy to go back and start start using again but Otherwise, you end up with, you know, we've got our seven step process that we follow. If something comes along that is outside of that, it's like, well, that's a different use case or a different scenario that's not relevant to what, to the way that.

I'm teaching people to solve problems. So therefore it's kind of, if I don't know something, yeah, I might be falling behind, but I'm perfectly happy with that because I've determined that that thing isn't useful for what I need.

So if I think about if something came along that was very heavily financial modeling, it might be relevant for Giles, but I'm there thinking, I don't really need to worry about that unless somebody does something that is critical. I think, yeah, I should incorporate that into my framework. This makes me think back to the first book that set me off on my whole kind of I want to go and do my own thing, which was Tim Ferriss's four hour work week. Some of you might be familiar with it.

And I always remember there's a passage where he talks about what it means to be an expert. And he said that being an expert does not mean you have to be the best in the world or whatever it is. If you go away and if you went away now, Mark, and read five big.

corporate books on marketing to the vast majority of people next week you'd be an expert in marketing and it always stuck with me this idea that being an expert is in the eyes of the person you are engaging with so and i always try and remember that

on the flip side of having amazing amounts of imposter syndrome at times when you think oh god there's so much i don't know it's like well hang on a minute but i also do know a lot and i've got a lot of experience and it's very helpful to the vast vast majority of people

I like asking questions. Yeah. Well, where do you where do you go to keep up? You know, or where do you go for your saying don't necessarily keep up the way? Where are you going? The forums?

people's blogs people's channels what where are you guys linkedin for me probably is is i scroll through that and there's people i follow that pop up and um microsoft's um yeah giles and i compared our linkedin feeds and mine was very different to his because i spent half my time whinging about other people on linkedin and there are certain people's blogs that i follow um and uh microsoft are good in in that they do the you know the updates i like to keep a track on those as well yeah yeah

You've got views on LinkedIn, Giles, I understand. Oh, God. How long have we got left? I'll get really angry if we go too deep. All right, shall we save it for next time? We'll do a teaser for next episode. Giles' opening statement is going to be what I think about LinkedIn. Okay, stay tuned for next week's episode. Yeah, we'll save that. Personally, I mean, I still, I mean, I do get value from, well, I mean, a lot of the stuff that you guys post as well.

um i think youtube quite often for me like i'll see every time leila guarani posts a video which i'll watch straight away i'll then often quite see that someone like dim early or Victor Momo and other people have also posted things on the same topic. So a bit like you said, Sue, I've got certain people that I'm kind of in the habit of absorbing all their content and the way they deliver it now. Yeah. I'm much more...

And so I'll scroll through LinkedIn, but a lot of it without without trying to get into the LinkedIn. It's rubbish, isn't it? You were going to say it, Mark. A lot of it's rubbish.

It's been three weeks since someone's done the VLOOKUP versus INDEX match debate. And then after that, it'll be another three weeks since another one. So, you know, there's always... someone's someone always wants to solve that problem but the but you scroll through and there's and start with you you pick up bits here and there but normally it's most of what I pick up is just through

You're just in the shower and you think, I wonder if I did this and that and I put them together, whether that would be a good solution. So you just, you know, once you get out of the shower, you have your breakfast, you go to the computer, you try it out. That's amazing. I can't believe that works. And then, of course, you then put a video on YouTube to which somebody then responds. There's a much easier way of doing that.

I can't believe I had to overcomplicate this with my thoughts. Can you believe it?

i don't follow that many people i don't watch that many youtube videos on linkedin i might see something oh that that seems interesting but often i think the the key is about having a deep knowledge of basic things and once you have a deep knowledge of basic things you can then apply it to lots of other things so if you really understand arrays or if you really understand

data model and how to structure a data model then it just if things start to flow through so it's more about simplification of everything rather than about learning more and more more can i have one more yeah soon I have my meetup group. So I have a weekly meetup group and anyone that I find interesting because people say to me, why do you do it every week? You know, that's so much time you put into it. I get a one on one, one hour session on people teaching me.

things that I'm interested in. So I had to Where are we? Tuesday, Tuesday evening, an hour on Git and development and prod and UAT testing and Visual Studio Code. And the week before we had Pavel, I mean... they're both such intelligent people and they give an hour session so i get an hour session every week on topics that i'm interested in because if i'm interested in it i reach out and i say

can you come to my user group and i get an hour's tuition which obviously everyone shares it and then because i'm interested in questions but i think for me that's probably one of my key ways as well I need to listen back to this because I think Sue started with anyone I find interesting rather than anything I find interesting, which makes me think if there's anyone she's found interesting, why have I not been invited? But by the end, she said anything.

i mean i mean they're there too i'm gonna listen to this back whether she said anyone or anything and then once that happens i'm then going to decide whether i'm going to be offended or not so by next week i didn't have much to deal with you before this podcast and now i do so you'll find an invite coming about about meetup groups because sue did one for the toronto excel meter that's my first time she did all this stuff around how you connect power or get stuff

in excel from power bi and you just sit there and it's like oh well that's that that was a great session there's loads of great sessions at meantime groups i did forget about those they are they are really good because you get to go deep on stuff rather than

I wins one wins was just brilliant. So well, I have this sort of bad habit where I see an article, I then I'm on my phone, I'll forward it to to do. So my to do list, I have a to read later list for Power BI, a to read later for Excel and a to read later for something else, just general business stuff. And they just go in, I just put them in that. I never read them. It's just this 500 list of stuff I haven't read. It just does not work. So what I do now is I just take the time to read one.

post a day if that and sometimes you don't even manage that and it could be from yeah twitter linkedin whatever sort of and meetup groups and stuff like that as well um so just trying to keep on top of it that way but just again little bits and like you said mark it's the like when lambdas came out i was like okay i can see a bit of a use python came out i was just like not going to be my cup of tea

you know there's just I want to focus in other areas it's not relevant to me right now might be I know I know who to ask and whose videos to watch it becomes relevant and that's really all I can do Yeah, when Lambdas came out, I was like, I originally thought that's not for me. I don't need it. It doesn't fit into my framework. And then you start to see a few use cases and I'm like, ah, I get it now. And so now it's kind of like, yeah, I'm happy to build that in.

But until then, it's like, I'm going to park that until something comes along that I think is actually useful. And I think that's the critical thing, isn't it? You don't have to do it immediately. He writes for Data Goblin. And he's absolutely brilliant. And he did a post about imposter syndrome and about learning. And he said, you don't have to do it straight away.

You know, don't put that pressure on yourself, you know, because we only live once. So know that it's there, but you don't have to know everything about it. Just know where to go when you need it, whatever you're doing. And I would much rather suffer from imposter syndrome than, you know, Dunning-Kruger. At the very least, like, I think there's a nice humility in, my God, there's just so much I don't know.

thinking you know it all yeah that is so dangerous isn't it it's so dangerous yeah when you when you think you know it you're in you're in trouble um i i just always like if i ever sort of start to get carried away i was just hark back to my early days of excel when i realized after four years that there was a remove grid lines checkbox because previously i was making all the all the cells white

four years of doing that right so we all learn but we all get there eventually all right look we're coming up to the hour i think so any closing thoughts from anybody or anything else that somebody was wanting to just mention before we wrap up today we all good yeah genuinely we genuinely going to talk about linkedin next week because i'll prepare a speech for you Oh no, I'm not doing it if you want to do a speech. No? It's not a speech, it's a rant. Yeah, it'll just be a vicious rant.

I heard you rant about it before. It's just dull. See you in Budapest. so i'll run to you in person well you're going to have to run then if you're going to come to bed of her no i'm coming i was not running running and i thought we'd got away this whole episode and they dropped it in in the last minute

He's booked Budapest Marathon and he's booked the hotel. Yeah, I will be there in the hotel. I'll be there on the side of the street at mile 26 with a Guinness cheering you on. I don't want Guinness, I want cider. It's not for you, it's for me. You don't get Guinness if you don't run. I will. It's his new regime. That's what I'm doing. It's the new Guinness regime. His new regime and he's doing well at it. Well, maybe Mark will take your place now.

Mark, you can have it. Do you want my marathon place in Budapest? I don't know what day it is, but I'm busy. I'm pretty sure. I've got a thing on that day with, you know, the bloke with the brown hair. I'm meeting him. So, yeah, I can't be there. He's practising his Os de Soleil impressions that day.

okay thank you everybody for listening and we'll hopefully catch you in the next episode catch us on youtube and spotify um hopefully uh apple podcast in the next five or six days so yeah all exciting thanks folks Lovely hanging out, people. Cheers everyone. Bye. Bye. and jungle nothing's clear to see i need my data clean lined up and precise Gonna unpivot these fields, oh baby, that's nice. You gotta unpivot, make my day the same.

from those cluttered columns let the insides ring transform and tiny now it's all in use Pivot, baby, I shake off those data blues Stack of meat and slim, that's the way to go. Turn wide to long, let the good data flow.