Adulting With Spreadsheet The Secret Weapon To Productivity and Life Management

While pen and paper have their merits in keeping track of things, these days, having things properly organized digitally is also a necessity.

Over the years, I have tried making all sorts of tables and attempting to find something that works. Eventually, because of my experiments, I got hooked on Spreadsheets, and I’ve been loving them since. I think it’s amazing that they can do so much, and you can know everything there is to know about your life. By tracking your life, you can see quantitative measures and the trajectory of where your life is going.

Recently, spreadsheet rolled out a feature that lets you insert a table instantly. This feature helps to save time when you know that sometimes making tables and beautifying them takes about an hour of the day. This feature comes with several templates ready to use that you can simply customize. The best part? If you blog anywhere there’s something called Content Tracker that you can use to track your content published on perhaps various platforms and see their performance.

While all these years I was on and off with spreadsheets, I eventually found the aesthetic that fit me. I don’t really have the habit of tracking my expenses and if I do, they’ll only stick for 3-4 months before I wasn’t tracking anything. Recently though, this is the habit that I try to incorporate in my 90-day improvement challenge where I’ll add 2 hours daily before bed to track my day, expenses, and everything because I feel like something is robbing me in daylight and something I am not aware of.

Money is a cruel mistress. If you don’t pay attention to her, she’ll leave you for someone who will. Budget, track, and care for your wealth, or it'll leave you for the pool boy (or something like that).

🔗 https://x.com/Codie_Sanchez/status/1380158338416119808

In the past, I get a little neurotic about all these but something fell down the line and I know, it’s time for me to do the “Adulting”. So, that's where I once again use Spreadsheet for my life. Out there, some people enjoy the notion but the boomer side of me can only make sense of minimalistic color palettes and graphics.

I even have this Meal and Grocery Shopping plan since I am working out and have some health goals. I can tell you as much that it’s a lot easier to have a meal plan and grocery plan when you’re attempting to lose some weight or be healthier.

Whenever I don’t track my life and what I eat, it feels horrible. I can understand that some people thrive that way but I couldn’t. With this digital system in place, it helps a lot since normally these days I don’t have much access to pen and paper especially when I am outside. At the same time, late at night, it’s most likely that I’ll be using my gadgets more than my book.

Looking back into my old spreadsheet, it was cringe. They were poorly formatted and had basic awful color schemes. While I know some type of data classification and some color knowledge, I was still using a color palette as well as borders that were pretty basic. Now, I’ve learned my lesson.

So, let me share a trick that works for me and I hope it could work for you: Play around with the type of borders that you could use, and play with colors and tables as well.

For someone who enjoys minimalistic but visually appealing stuff, these well-organized and aesthetically pleasing spreadsheet makes it easier to read and keep me motivated. I also felt like I’d already leveled up my game. It’s a very simple trick but if you’re like me, who feels constantly bored, this tweak is motivating. At the same time, doing mundane tasks and adulting feels a lot less scary as well.