Weekday Ideas - 9th March

I've had almost half a year to plan my unemployment. This was a double-edged sword. On one hand, I was able to leave my role smoothly, with great relationships still intact and had months to think about my new direction. On the other hand, it's been hard to pounce on opportunities and, with my right to work in the USA now voided, I need to think about finding a role in a 'new' city.

However, one thing it certainly did grant me was the opportunity to plan for a career break and a chance to map out a pretty clear daily action plan on my terms. As part of this plan, I decided to share one idea a day for every workday I wasn't working. So here goes: Day 1.

DAY 1

I love spreadsheets. Whatever program it is that takes your fancy their ability to do almost anything is admirable. Google Sheets has been at the core of every area of my last 5 years building out CaCh in the USA but if you still need a reason to fall in love with them just check out this.

So it's only fair that my day one idea pays homage to their ability to do almost any task.  More specifically, I want to talk about the IMPORTXML feature. IMPORTXML has been the most vital part of beginning my job search. IMPORTXML allows you to trawl data from websites and import it directly into a spreadsheet. Now, pulling key details from the right databases can be a highly timeconsuming activity and this saves that time and this alone has made shortlisting my next move easier. But on top of this, once you have manipulatable data in a spreadsheet - the possibilities are much more exciting than purely a timesaving hack.

If you aren't familiar with this function you can learn how to play around with it here AND if you need some source material to play around with. I'd suggest this. It's quite a simple page to try out the function and, hack aside, this searchable list of header copy from 100+ startups is also a cracking resource.

I hope you find the same amount of value in this daily share as I did.