Simon Joliveau Breney

I use Claude for spreadsheet work. It’s good at understanding what’s actually in your data, not just what you tell it is there. It can edit existing files, which matters more than you might think. A lot of spreadsheet work isn’t creating new ones from scratch. It’s modifying existing ones while keeping formulas and formatting intact.

You never had control; all you had was anxiety. And when you let go of that, even a little bit, what you’re left with is one of the most powerful reasons imaginable for taking any action that feels as though it might make life more meaningful or vibrant, which is that frankly, at the end of the day, you might as well.

It’s called The MTO™ Technique. Instead of writing a goal in The Dreaded Binary Technique, you break every goal into three levels:

• Minimum

• Target

• Outrageous

Minimum is defined as “what you can be counted on to achieve based on your past performance”. Not on your hopes. But on the reality of your actual past achievements.

Target is the “stretch”,

Framing the task as high-stakes or important can encourage the AI to “try harder.”

• Before : Provide a detailed analysis of .

• After : Imagine you are preparing a report for the executive team. Provide a detailed analysis of .

Across all creative fields, what isn’t there is just as important as what is there. In fashion, Coco Chanel advised, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” In music, Miles Davis famously quipped, “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” In design, Jan Tschichold noted that “white space is to be