Hope you had a great holidays and new year. A ton of random Excel-related news came up during the holidays which means a lot of great stories for our newsletter. I taught at Columbia Business School a few weeks ago as part of the Samberg Institute’s training program, and will be at CBS this week for two sessions. I’ll also have a few more session scheduled in the city so follow us onTwitter for updates!

“I am ready to face any challenges that are foolish enough to face me.” – Dwight K. Schrute

Saving Money Like A Millionaire Athlete

Being from Detroit, I couldn’t help but smile when this article came out about former Lions wide receiver Ryan Broyles talking about budgeting $60K a year for his family despite earning millions a year.

Unlike most athletes who become overnight millionaires, Broyles understands the planning required to live a happy life not just now, but for the rest of his life. I break down how his earnings and savings truly separate him from most other Americans in our latest blog post.

Source: KeyCuts blog

How to Find Your Soulmate Using Excel

We couldn’t believe this story when we first read it either.

Turns out Excel is not just good for formulas and graphs, but also for finding your fiancée. Celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna decides to put his romantic life into the hands of our favorite spreadsheet tool and out pops Kate Davey, his assistant for 20 years.

This is isn’t the first time Excel has been used as the de facto tool for finding the woman of your dreams. Who can forget the banker in 2012 who used Excel tokeep track of all the online dates he was going on by color coding and ranking his dates?

Source: TheJournal.ie

The Productivity Tips That DO NOT Work

How many productivity articles do you read about being, well, productive? Guess what? Just reading these articles makes you less productive!

The quick reasons people aren’t productive: 1) Relying on quick-fix productivity hacks 2) Reading too many productivity tips (haha) 3) Trying to work faster/longer/hards 4) Not taking time to get to know yourself (and your colleagues/employees). Hopefully reading this newsletter doesn’t count as being unproductive…

Source: Fast Company

Making Your Daily Commute Hell – Open MS Office Files On Your Car’s Dash

We all know drinking and driving is wrong. What about analyzing spreadsheets and looking at your latest PowerPoint and driving?

During CES a few weeks ago, Harman and Microsoft partnered together to show how you can view your Office 365 files right on your dashboard. Luckily, viewing your files will only be available when the car is parked or in “autonomous” mode. A commenter on this stor makes a good point: what happens when you get the black screen of death? Doing a CTRL+ALT+DELETE on your Corolla doesn’t sound too appealing.

Source: CarBuzz