Category: General

Thoughts on productivity

Slow Google Sheets loading bar

I’ve been thinking about productivity a lot in the past year.

I’ve had to.

Life is busier now than it’s ever been.

My wife and I have a young family (two sons under the age of three) so we have our hands full at home. We both work full time and have ambitious career goals.

Balancing these two worlds has undoubtedly been the most challenging puzzle of my life thus far.

In an earlier stage of my career, when time seemed to be an almost unlimited commodity compared to today, I could work until 9, 10 or 11pm (or later) no problem. Work at the weekend if necessary.

Now, with a young family I don’t have that option (and nor do I want to be working at the weekend), so I have to look more critically at how I use my time.

I’m continually trying to be more productive.

Imagine this scenario, and ask yourself if you relate:
Continue reading Thoughts on productivity

2017 in review and a look forward to 2018

Happy New Year to you all!

‘Max Q‘ is a term used in rocketry to denote the moment during a rocket flight when aerodynamic stress on the rocket’s airframe is at it’s maximum. It’s one of the early milestones of any flight, and one of the most dangerous to boot. Astronauts and engineers both breathe a sigh of relief when the rocket passes this point. Engines, which have been throttled back to 60 – 70% of capacity during this phase, are once again opened up and the great fire-breathing, bone-rattling tin can accelerates rapidly upwards again, on its way to space.

Well, the summer of 2017 felt like ‘max Q’ for our family. We had a second baby boy in late May (he’s brilliant!), relocated from DC to Florida in early July, sold a house and bought a house, prepared for our first hurricane in August (that was stressful!) and had a to-do list longer than our arm, in fact, all our arms combined.

Through this, I did what I could, when I could, to keep the ball rolling with my business. I launched my second course, Data Cleaning and Pivot Tables in Google Sheets, in June, although almost all of the work was completed prior to my son’s arrival in May.

Since October, the throttle has been fully open again on the business and things are moving along nicely. I launched my third course, Advanced Formulas 30 Day Challenge, in mid December, and had over 1k students sign up in the first week.

2017 highlights

Continue reading 2017 in review and a look forward to 2018

2016 in review and a look forward to 2017

Happy New Year to you all!

If 2015 was a year of huge change, then 2016 was more incremental, building on the foundations of 2015. I still tried lots of different things – different gigs, different projects, different tools – but I’ve found creating apps and solving data problems on the Google platform is my sweet spot of skills, experience and enjoyment.

2016 highlights:

On this site

Investing so much time and effort into this site really started to pay off over the course of 2016.

Web traffic chart

Over 2,500 of you have subscribed to my email list and enjoyed a free copy of my ebook: Spice Up Your Sheet Life.

Midway through the year, I passed 100k pageviews, then 150k pageviews and am now close to 200k.

Several posts have garnered some really great commentary from readers, adding tons of value to the original post. This one in particular has 112 comments and counting!

These have been the most popular posts of 2016:

In addition, this post about Google’s new data visualization and dashboard tool, Data Studio, was the most “viral” post of 2016, getting a huge (for me) number of shares and views on the day I published it:

Google Analytics Data Studio tweet

In addition to those posts mentioned above, I also really enjoyed creating this animated data visualization of Washington D.C.’s temperatures since the 1980’s, using Google’s Visualization API:

Animated temperature chart using Google Chart API

Client highlights

Over the past year, I’ve specialized in providing G Suite and Apps Script services to clients, building dashboards, apps and tools to solve problems and save clients time. I’ve really enjoyed these projects and have worked with some great clients. I look forward to continuing into 2017 and focussing even further on custom Apps Script solutions.

In addition, I really enjoyed teaching two more data analytics courses for General Assembly in Washington, D.C.. The students were great in both groups and it’s a real privilege to teach them, and see such rapid progress in 10 weeks.

For private clients, I taught a number of data visualization workshops, focussing on Excel and Tableau, in Minnesota, Virginia and California.

I learnt a ton this year about running my own consulting business.

One of the biggest lessons was one client disappearing off the face of the earth when it came to settling their invoice. Despite repeated calls and emails, I’ve heard nothing. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but it taught me a valuable lesson about trust, respect and how I price my services.

Want to work with me in 2017? Let me know and I’ll be in touch.

Goals for 2017

January is an exciting time of the year: a chance to set ambitious goals and a strategy for getting there.

The one big goal for last year that I failed to complete was releasing my digital course on building dashboards with Google Sheets and Data Studio. However, I’ve not stopped working on it, and it’ll be even better when I do release it. I’ve now recorded enough material that I’m confident of a launch in Q1 of 2017. Sign up to my email list for news and an early-bird offer when it launches.

Specifically, my goals for 2017:

  • Launch my Google Sheets & Data Studio dashboard course
  • Launch Edition 2 of my free ebook: Spice Up Your Sheet Life, with more interesting tips and tricks for working with Google Sheets
  • Launch two other digital products
  • Make a huge push with Apps Script, to deepen my knowledge & experience, and create detailed articles for this site. One quick way to measure this is to see what my GitHub profile looks like by the year-end, hopefully something more like this:

    • Github Chart

  • Continue to create in-depth articles and tutorials for this site, aiming for 1 – 2 posts a week
  • Continue to provide great service and solutions for my clients, in the G Suite & Apps Script ecosystem

It’s going to take hard work, focus and dedication to achieve all of these goals, but it’s as easy as ABC*

*Always Be Coding

By this, I mean being productive and efficient, always moving forwards and minimizing distractions (beware the Shiny Object Syndrome!). It’s crucial as a freelancer to create efficient workflows and systems, and to stay organized.

Well, that should do it. I better get back to work 😉

Happy New Year and all the best for 2017!

Cheers,
Ben

2015 in review and a look forward to 2016

Wow, that time of year again! Time flies.

New Year's Eve Fireworks
New Year’s Eve fireworks by: Christine Matthews

2015

2015 was a year of huge growth, both personally and in a work capacity.

By far the biggest event of 2015 (or in fact, life so far) was the birth of my son which has enriched and changed life in so many ways. It’s been challenging to figure out how to care for and nurture a new human being. Balancing that with rest of life hasn’t been easy for my wife and me. But we’re finding our feet as new parents and the experience is so special that it trumps anything else. When he smiles back or laughs it makes every night ops session worth it.

In a work capacity in 2015, I focussed on establishing a freelance career in data analytics through client work and teaching for General Assembly. Early in the year, I expanded my technical skills with a foray into web development but things really took off for me when I doubled-down on my true work passion – making sense of data.

I worked with Excel, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Google Sheets, Geckoboard and Tableau for client projects and at General Assembly, teaching data analytics to students.

Some of the highlights of 2015:

  • Teaching Data Analytics and Excel courses for General Assembly was a fantastic experience. I’m delighted to continue into 2016, teaching these courses again.
  • All sorts of interesting client work, including building dashboards and SQL data analysis projects.
  • Learning web development through building several web applications, using d3, Rails and Javascript.
  • Finally building that Excel dashboard of US Political data that I had in the back of mind for far too long.
  • Figuring out a workaround using CSS and text widgets to create pie charts in a Geckoboard dashboard. This was undoubtedly the most detailed and time consuming side project of the year, but for that reason one of the most satisfying!
  • And finally, on a personal level, publishing stories and photos from the 2014 climbing trip to the beautiful Rocky Mountains – Part 1 and Part 2.

2016

I love the first few days of January, when the whole year stretches ahead and the options seem limitless. I’m really excited about 2016 and the work projects I have planned. It’s going to build on the foundations I laid in 2015, as I expand the teaching, client and website offerings.

Specifically, I have a couple of digital products launching in the first quarter, which I can’t wait to share. Watch this space!

So, goals for 2016:

  • Teach Data Analytics and Excel courses for General Assembly again. I’m signed up to teach the cohort starting on January 30th.
  • Launch my first ebook, featuring all of the most interesting, weird and wonderful spreadsheet tricks I’ve come across. I’ve nearly finished writing it and can’t wait to share it. It’s been hugely fun to research and write. Coming your way soon!
  • Launch my own dashboard course, likely through Udemy. I’m working on my first digital course which I plan to launch in the first quarter of this year. Again, I’m really excited about this.
  • Write more frequently on this blog. This website is critical to my business since the majority of my leads come through it, so I’m going to make a big push to create lots of interesting and valuable content on here this year.
  • Do more public speaking. I enjoyed speaking at GA’s graduation event last year and would love to speak at some events or meetups this year. It’s a great way to meet new people and share ideas with an interested audience.

What’s my secret mantra for 2016?

Focus!

This was my biggest single takeaway from last year. Things really started to move for me when I zeroed in on a niche and poured my heart and soul into it. So I plan to keep this in mind, stay focussed and avoid distractions this year.

So cheers to big things happening this year!

Happy New Year and all the best for 2016!

Cheers,
Ben