My son Jack is transitioning from primary to secondary school this year. It’s a major leap for any kid and he’s been looking forward to it. But then he caught wind of the fact that he’d be doing an extra week of school for a transition period.
I’ve mentioned before that Jack is autistic. There are five things which can lead to autistic meltdowns. One of them is a sense of injustice. Things happen to Jack, and it’s just not fair.
In this case, why should he have an extra week of school while his sister is enjoying her summer holiday?
School also arranged two days for Open days. As these happened during term and school time, Jack wasn’t missing out of course. The new school did a fantastic job explaining what would happen during that extra week of school. At the end of the two days Jack came back and declared to us. “I’ve decided, I’m going to summer school”.
Because now he’d already overcome some of his fears of the unknown and he knew what fun activities lay ahead.
Phew!
OK. Transitioning from Excel to Tableau isn’t quite the same thing (or as hard) but it is important to see it as a transition.
However, as a busy professional you just don’t have time to learn something new, deeply enough to do what you currently do, as quickly.
Some things will feel harder at first (like having to make tables in Tableau, or starting earlier and walking further or having to catch a bus on your own!).
And even though you know that those wonderful dynamic data-driven interactive things called dashboards (replace with whatever shiny thing you looked forward to at school – for Jack it’s his own computer) will actually reduce the need for static tables…you will be stuck trying to do things “the old way” in the new tool for a while and it will get crazy hard before it gets done (or enjoyable) if you aren’t careful.
So, try to take small steps that don’t break your rhythm – ie do it in your normal work time, on a piece of work that would have required time to do in Excel as well, and doesn’t have urgency.
Give yourself some wins so that you can taste the reason to go through the pain.
How did you transition to Tableau in a way that meant you didn’t break your stride?
Steve “Small Steps” Adams
