Excel is MUCH MORE than a brief thrill.

Inspired by a conversation with Bob Phillips last week.

You can go to an amusement part and go on all the awesome rides. You can tell your friends about how awesome it is, post pictures on Instagram, keep going back for more.

Every so often a new ride is opened and the buzz repeats. It’s all good. And awesome. It’s a great way to make your life exciting, if a tad dangerous but then that’s part of the attraction. It’s awesome. (and a great way to get us to go back to the amusement park again and again).

Did I say how awesome it is?

But is that a good and valid reason why your boss should pay you more?

What a stupid and irrelevant question (!) you might ask.

The relevance is, there are some awesome things out there for our amusement, our excitement, our adventure.

Excel is a great playground for this. Every few years we have a new feature that dominated the conversation. Hundreds of new Camtasia sales ensue, hundreds of new videos demonstrating the ‘new rides’, attracting more and more people to try the new ride.

That’s all good.

But if the aim is for your boss to pay you a better pay rate, then that is not the route to it. There is no connection between your Excel-power-feature-induced adrenaline and what’s important to him.

Your boss will reward you for anything you do THAT WILL MAKE HIM LOOK GOOD.

He ‘may’ like your fun and adventure along the way, but in the end what makes the difference is the difference that you make in the workplace. For example, does your fun make everyone else more productive?

Ask yourself, is the new Excel feature that’s setting the world alight … is it a few thrilling minutes of personal exhilaration? Or will it make a permanent improvement to how his department runs?

As we say in Excel …

=If(‘It is the latter’, ‘you get better paid’, ‘who gives a shit?’)

Get excited about the difference you make in the wider process. Anything else (though awesome) is personal fun.

Tip: Excel is much more than a brief thrill.

Hiran de Silva

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