Having worked in both the expert and educational levels in both music and in the information industries, this jibes with my experience, and I wonder if it may be due to the same blindspot effects that cause us to believe we have “all the data” when in fact we have next to none (the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” comes to mind) — if you ask a child or even an alzheimer’s patient to give you a summary of their world model, they never mentions the big gaps in their model, they experience a cohesive ‘now’ and then simply conclude they have the whole picture, and when you look at it that way, its really remarkable that any of us have ever noticed our lackings and bothered to become experts at all!

I have to admit that I got a major boost from my original ‘productivity’ software - Lotus Symphony - which included an automated tutorial module that walked one through basic to intermediate formulas/functions and menu basics. It also included a How To guide that went through basic spreadsheet layout and design. Ah, the good old days when software came with SERIOUS support and documentation, actually providing some value for the hundreds of US$ cost beyond the software disks.

Having developed some understanding and ability with spreadsheets circa 1985, the changes in spreadsheets circa 1990 were able to digest, also the changes since then. I’ve used the airplane metaphor before, but why not repeat myself: some of us learned to fly in contraptions with 4 levers, a joystick and no dials. We learned how to fly without instruments. [More importantly, we learned how to LAND (error trapping, diagnostics) without instruments.] All the changes since have been gravy, and for us they’ve been INCREMENTAL. New spreadsheet users have all the current features dumped on them at once. Who’s there showing them how to keep things simple? What’s necessary, useful, nice but superfluous, and usually more pain than gain (e.g., merged cells)? They’re going to buy books to learn this?

Time isn’t the only factor. Opportunity and conditions count for a lot too.

Re self taught, if all you do is the same boring techniques again and again, you’ll be like the mediocre skiers. If you are constantly looking around, reading from all sources, you can actually push beyond the mediocre glass ceiling, and maybe bump against the expert glass ceiling. This is what I feel I’ve been doing, reading advanced sources (Professional Excel Development comes to mind, among others) and trying the more advanced VB6 tasks within VBA. But then part of being good is coming up with easier, faster, and more reliable ways that do not rely on heroic measures.