Tips for not making idiot mistakes in PPT or Excel
So I've been in my internship for 2 weeks now and I repeatedly make the most asinine mistakes in powerpoint. I'll do a slide, get it back covered in red, fix it, and repeat. It's f-cking ridiculous. Can anyone share some tips on how to start noticing dumb shit, tips/tricks etc?
Learn from Dwight.
[quote=Cartwright]Learn from Dwight.
]
You bastard, you beat me to it. Haha, definitely they best quote ever. I actually just gave this advice to my director last week.
On a serious note...
1- Before you take something to a senior, print it out, walk through it line by line with a red pen and mark it up. Go back to your file, walk through your mark up and highlight each mark-up after you've fixed it. When you're done, walk back through the file on the screen and double check off each mark-up to ensure you got it. This is how you should be turning your Senior's edits as well. Print it out again, walk through it line by line again with a red pen, mark it up, turn the edits. Repeat until you no longer have mark-ups. Make sure you read every word. Once you become familiar with a document, you glaze right over stuff because you read the first two words and finish the thought in your brain... you're not editing the thought, you're editing the text.
2- You should begin to get a feel for their style and way of thinking. You should be able to anticipate their questions and certain stylistic things that they always point out.
3- Every time you come to a decision ask yourself "would an idiot do this?" if the answer to that question is "Yes," then do not do that thing.
Deleted.
okay here's what you can do
Usually the associate will change the same powerpoint slide 3 times anyways, so just do whatever he wants but MAKE SURE to not miss any marked comments.
This advice is gold. I had the some problem the OP did, and went and spoke to the VP (BB assigned mentor) who worked above my associate. He gave me the same advice.
PRINT. PRINT. PRINT AGAIN.
What? You should not print anything, printing kills trees and destroys the environment. Go paper-less!
No, seriously, print everything. A few studies (I don't have the weblinks here sorry) have shown that a reader's critical analysis weakens when reading on a screen which projects light, as opposed to supports which just receives light (cinema screen, book, ebook, calculator). This, in addition to fatigue-generation effects.
As long as you keep method, rigour and patience they won't have any problem with your work. Oh, and avoid asking two different people to correct your slides (e.g. your associate and your VP), because you'll be in trouble when they come back to you with contradictory red mark-up.
I have always had difficulty balancing my strong environmental ethics and printing in the workplace... and, true that, it has led me to commit mistakes.
My first day at ML I almost had a heart attack when I seen how much paper was wasted. I love trees but now I find myself printing an extra 100 pages just for giggles.
On the serious note triple check everything like the guys said. You will find mistakes even after double checking it's the nature of the animal.
go hard or go home
Seeing Dwight image... Can't resist going into BOFH mode...
HI. FRIENDLY BOFH HERE. FOR ISSUES INVOLVING EXCEL, I RECOMMEND EXCEL'S 1234 DATA CHECK FEATURE. TO RUN IT, FIRST MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A LOT OF UNSAVED DATA IN YOUR PROJECT. IT ONLY CHECKS THE UNSAVED DATA. TO RUN IT, START BY HOLDING DOWN ALT AND HITTING F1 - F2 - F3 - F4...
//End troll mode.
In all seriousness, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. That's a fact of life, and it's your managers job to help catch some of your mistakes, within reason. That's a fact of life of being a manager, associate, senior developer, or whatever the term is in your group. If you have problems staying focused in a group that requires a lot of concentration, you may want to just make sure you don't have a mild form of ADD that could be treated with medication. Also recommend sleeping on things before you hand them in if you have time.
Do whatever you can to cross-check stuff on totals and the like. Look at every big number you produce to see if it makes sense. It's all about discipline, discipline, discipline, and using shortcuts where you can (like cross-checks) to make your life easier.
You got me really good.
Yeah. For those of you that don't know, hitting ALT-F4 closes Excel. Good news is that if someone genuinely falls for it (I'd like to think I gave enough warning with the ALL CAPS, Dwight reference, and everything else that I was being facetious), Excel will ask him/her if he/she wants to save his data these days. Back in the bad-old-days of MS Office, I was working on a project for school back in the '90s when my idiot kid brother hit ALT-F4, Word automatically closed, and I lost a day's worth of typing.
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