The Joy of Spreadsheets
By our cat-loving, crocheting, queen of organisation herself, producer Shaunagh McClean.
Hello, my name is Shaunagh and I am a spreadsheet addict. I think it’s important to make that clear from the start.
I am the producer for The Roaring Girls which means I spend a lot of time making and thinking about spreadsheets, which to me is a dream come true.
When I told the team that I finally had an idea for the blog, and I said spreadsheets, I was met with laughs and eye rolls…as I spend most of my time talking about how much I love spreadsheets.
I felt it important to tell you about the spreadsheets I have made for my own personal day to day life, nothing business related as that would be too easy and the list could go on for years.
I make myself a yearly cash-flow, with the expected income (Covid-19 tore 2020’s to shreds!). These usually make me feel 10000000000% worse about my financial situation but have been known to make me feel better on the rarest of occasions.
Holiday plans – any time I go on holiday, I make a spreadsheet broken by day, the activity, how far this is from accommodation/train station/bus station/any other mode of transport hub. I have a second sheet in the workbook which details the price of every activity to make sure I am getting the best deal I can find.
The first thought I had when we got engaged was, OH MY GOODNESS THE SPREADSHEET, with budgets/guests/dietary requirements/who needs a hotel/schedules. (It is worth noting at this point, we got engaged on holiday, and I can confirm that this wasn’t on the spreadsheet which is slightly upsetting to my type-a brain.)
A symptom tracker – I was diagnosed with Endometriosis in 2018 after 12 years of pain, the pain came back with a vengeance a short two months after my surgery so I created a spreadsheet to take to my doctor, which detailed my daily symptoms, colour coded for good and bad days, and a formula to calculate the average bad days I had per week, to be able to prove the return of the pain.
Tracking the sell prices of turnips on my Animal Crossing island (this is one I am somewhat embarrassed by, but transparency is key, right?)
Reading/Netflix lists – what to watch next, including links on where to find the books etc.
EVERY trip to Ikea, including what the item is, how many we need and the location of where to find it in store.
And when Covid-19 started rearing its ugly head in the UK, I was very anxious about its impact on my personal and work life and found myself saying “I wish I could make a spreadsheet to understand this” … A LOT.
Spreadsheets help me create order, to what is a cloudy or foggy situation. Seeing words and numbers in their individual cells, colour coded with a beautifully working formula, help me make sense of the complexities of any given situation.
Bloody hell I love spreadsheets.
Shaunagh contemplating a cat-based spreadsheet. Probably.