Microsoft has put together a lot of helpful resources to help people get on board the Windows 10 as power users. You even get reward points for the Microsoft Virtual Academy one.

The most helpful is Getting Started with Windows 10 Microsoft Virtual Academy video tutorials.

And if you're more tech/developer inclined there are other resources you might want to access.

What’s new for developers in Windows 10

Tools for Every Developer and Every App

MSDN Channel9 Windows 10 tutorials

Get started with Windows apps

Design UWP apps

I would be using a lot of these tutorials too.

Yesterday, I found a three weeks old email that I didn't remember noticing. It's the downside to getting too many emails a day. My smartphone says I have over 120,000 unread emails, and I think I get over 100 emails a day. This particular email was from someone who is interested in our Excel training. He wanted to know how to freeze beyond the "Top Row" and "First Column" option. 

His exact question was, "How can I freeze a worksheet both horizontally and vertically at the same time? "

Technically, he meant how can I freeze row(s) and column(s) simultaneously in Excel. 

It is a common question that people also ask during our training sessions. I have a very interesting way of explaining it such that you can't get it wrong but I am unable do that via an article. It's a mix of captivating stories and live demonstration.

However, I'll give you a summary answer that will guide you if you have such problem in Excel. It is very easy to implement and remember too.

You click on the cell below the row you want to freeze and after the column you want to freeze. Then you click on View menu, Freeze Panes, Freeze Panes.

Below is an illustration of how to freeze row 1 and column 1 at the same time. It can be applied to any number of rows and any number of columns.

And that's it!

The strange truth is that despite the millions of people available to do any job (job seekers), companies trimming their workforce and everyone complaining that there is a murderous competition for every opportunity they come across; there are lots of opportunities for the creative and hardworking Nigerian youth.

If you were to take a mountain top view of the Nigerian opportunities space, you will see people crowded at one end and almost no one at the other end. Everyone is going after the same opportunities; everyone wants to work in the same companies; everyone is focused at one end of the opportunities spectrum.

image: sconzani.blogspot.com

There is a side that can be likened to a virgin fertile land; almost no one is looking toward there and it's rich with untapped opportunities. Then there is the side everyone has over cultivated and now it looks like a dessert; all dried up.

So what are those opportunities?

1. Take out Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Wole Soyinka and the likes from our literature and school children are left with crap novels at school. There is a lot of space for over a 100 Chimamanda Adichie in Nigeria. That space is like what the Nigerian music space used to be. You don't even have to be a genius to succeed there. Just be creative, write a quality novel or technical book and never stop improving.
2. Content. There is a dearth of quality content in every sphere of our economy. People sell low quality everything, and still tell you that one is original and the other is fake while both are fake. Our commedians, musicians, OAPs and journalist are more focused on shallow make-me-laugh content than intellectually rich content. Our service providers don't know what quality service means. If you can do anything on a high quality level, you'll have very little competition. 
3. Excellent craftsmanship. It's funny that our craftsman know extremely little about their crafts. My tailor knows almost nothing that is correct about fabric type and quality. The welders around only know of one metal type -- rust iron -- and they use it for everything even to build a water tank. There is a big market for the educated craftsman. 

And those are just the few I could type this morning. You definitely know more.

I have found a new motivation to do the things I really want to do and to go after the life I want. And that motivation is a modification of the title of this post. In fact, it is the answer to the question - how do you stop a man who does not give up?

You can't. Only God can.

Only God can stop a man who is bent of achieving his goal. Only God can keep him from reaching his goal. It doesn't matter how slowly he progress or far down the ladder he starts from or how many obstacles lie on his path to success or how impossible his quest seems. As long as he doesn't give up, all it will take him is time to get from the "here" to "there".

And that is my new motivation. Now I ask myself -- "If success is certain and not a worry, what would I go after?" If all that it would cost me to get what I want is time, then I had better pick a goal big enough that whatever time it took me to achieve it, it would still be a marvellous feat.

If I could do anything, what would I do?

It's like aiming for the moon and being sure you'll reach it. So in my case, I aim for a very big goal that will force me to do more of the things I enjoy doing. Life doesn't have to be a compromise between fulfilment and wealth. If there is a goal that can get me both and if that goal is attainable, then that is what I am going after.

I don't have to bother about what everyone else is doing or run using another's time/timepiece. My success is my own project. I have to manage it as a responsible and sensible project manager. I have to list out the resources I need, make a project timeline and follow strictly the project plan. Rather than following someone else's project plan and timeline.

The moment you make it sink into you that your success depends on you and God on your side, you let go of distractions. All that would be left is that you ensure that you set a big enough goal. Make the journey, especially if it would be tough, be well worth the goal.

My first job was while I was in 300 level (3rd year) at Federal University of Technology Akure. There was a long ASUU (lecturers at government universities) strike that year and I spent the better part of the 5 months doing CompTIA A+ and CompTIA Network+. When the strike was called off and school resumed, I looked for a part-time job and got one as a CyberCafe assistant administrator. I had the confidence to go for the job because I did CompTIA A+ and CompTIA Network+ training.

By the time I was in my 5th and final year at university, I was Oracle 10g Database Administration Associate certified (OCA 10g) and Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). And again, we had another long ASUU strike that made the university postpone our convocation by a year and made us miss the NYSC batch we should have followed. That period, I got my second job: as a CCNA instructor at a computer training institute. I got the job because of my CCNA certification.

During my NYSC, I continued as an independent CCNA instructor and even got what would have become my third job had I not declined the job offer. I had applied to NIIT in Bayelsa for a trainer's position but the facility owner had rebranded and built an ICT focused polytechnic there. They found my CV very impressive and gave me a job role as the head of the networking and (something something) department. But I wanted to go back to Lagos after my NYSC, not wanting any job role that would tie me down in Bayelsa. So I didn't show up for the job/resumption.

My first full-time job, I got considered for the interview because I had CCNA. 

You'll agree with me that my certifications have gotten me jobs, even when I was still a student. And that is the end of the first part of this post. Certifications do help you to get a job.

The moment you get the job your certifications have no use. I studied more as a CCNA instructor than while preparing for the tough CCNA exam. I re-read everything at least twice and did a lot more simulations. In fact, I would have performed the same on the job if I didn't have the CCNA certification. And it was same with every job role the certification gave me a huge edge in getting. Even in my first full-time job, we didn't do anything my CCNA was useful for. I had to learn from scratch what I needed on the job. I guess they also expected that as the first months were for academic styled training and then I was attached to a senior engineer to shadow.

Did I mention that I also have CCNA Voice certification too? Well, the day I finally got the opportunity to configure a Cisco Unified Communications Network and set up a VoIP enterprise network, the CCNA voice was useless. I was sweating and closing late at nights without making any significant progress. I thank God for Google.

Today, I am not a expert at networking or database administration. The very fields I have certifications in. I am an expert at business data analysis and Microsoft Excel. Fields I didn't study at university nor did a professional certification in. And why?

image: parttimeaudiophile.com

Only one thing can make you an expert, and it is lots of on the job experience. Not certifications. Not even reading. Not attending training classes. And not watching hours of training videos. You just have to get your hands dirty, and get real world experience solving issues for other people. That was how I learned Microsoft Excel and Business Data Analysis. I simply dived in, made other people's problems my own and used Google as my study guide. I solved very many work and real world (not textbook) issues and ended up as an expert.

At the foundation of everything that happens are some fundamental rules that can't be broken.

Rules like:

• keep your expenses below your income,
• you can't fool everybody all the time,
• you reap what you sow,
• you can't give what you don't have,
• you seldom rise above the people you surround yourself with, and
• lasting changes in life have to come from within.

A lot of times, in following trends and friends, we go against these fundamental rules. We bump up our expenses to keep up with the joneses while not paying attention to our income. Our future plans are filled with what to own and buy, not what income generating activities to do. We ignore the fact that we have to earn the money we need to spend and thus should pay more attention to growing our income generating ventures rather than growing our expenses. In the end, you see a lot of people who have too many financial pressures, and little unplanned urgent expenses become major emergencies.

There are also many of us who surround ourselves with the kind of people we don't want to be like. It sounds unnatural but yet we do it. We are avoiding taking a big leap. We feel too comfortable around them even though they are not helping us progress. We are afraid to join the community of the people we look up to. Unintentionally, we are breaking another fundamental rule. You can't rise above the company you keep. 

And they are a few of us who think we can work our way to the top through deceit. We lie about too many things. We trump up our competence and achievements. We profess to give what we don't have. We live like most politicians. And it is a terrible way to achieve success. You damage everything that matters more than money -- relationships, family and your reputation.

No matter how tempted you are to ignore the fundamentals, you shouldn't. A life built on unsound foundation will crumble or at best, be permanently faulty.

In all you do, always let the fundamentals be on your side.

I think the best way to find your passion is simply to make the most use of whatever resources you have today, to take the best of the choices you have today and to never stop improving.

I know it sounds a lot different from what most of us think. A lot of us think finding our passion is more of a soul searching exercise. Having to look within for the one thing we feel we are born to do. In reality, most people have found their passion by adapting to their changing world and working crazy hard to rise above the limiting circumstances around them than by looking within for the one thing to say yes to. 

The problem with trying to think out your passion is it usually leads to frustration and doubts. Our reality is always changing. The world within us and the outside world never stay constant. What you are crazy about today may no longer appeal to you in a year's time. Then the opportunities you considered in thinking out your passion may dry up faster than you imagined. Nothing stays the same and you'll gain more from being pragmatic than being dogmatic about your life decisions. Especially in the choice of your passion.

If you simply do whatever your hand finds to do and put in your best always at what you do, you will with ease find answers to a lot of your life's questions. 

We all have the potential to be whatever we want and most of us want to be highly successful and billionaires. And we want to figure out that sure legit way to accomplish that. We try to find that one thing that we should do with the whole of our heart and head to get to that goal. And we call that one thing our passion. Unfortunately, we all have very limited options at every stage of our lives. But there is a good side to that limitation. To be the best you can be and take your best shot at the success you desire, you only have to take the best of the options you have now.

image: blog.iquestgroup.com

And like Lord Chesterfield once said, "Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves." If you take care of today, make the most of today; you will inevitably be making the most of your entire life. Everything you are doing today are like sowing seeds of what will grow tomorrow. If you focus more on sowing right and keeping the field of your life well watered, you will have a rich harvest (success) in the future.

In fact, I think you should let your passion find you. Just focus on making the most of each day and the opportunities it provides.

If you look at the most influential people in the world, one thing they all have in common is that each of them is extremely good at something. So good that everyone knows it.

The people making the most valuable changes in the world are people who dedicated an insane amount of time and effort at getting extremely good at one thing.

The awards that matter are not given by Facebook votes or SMS votes. The Nobel Prize, Grammy Award, Academy Award, Pulitzer Prize, Webby Award, Copley Medal and being in the Forbes List. 

You have to be extremely good at whatever you are doing. And I believe that is where most of us get it wrong. A lot of us are good at what we are not doing. There is a mismatch between our passion and career. So we just give our career the minimum weekday efforts we can afford and pour our heart into being good at something else during the weekend. We don't push past the craft part of our career. We simply do our work like everyone expects and spare our extra energy on something else we love. Many of us don't take our skills to an art level, where we become magicians at what we do and are seen by everyone as extremely good at it.

Then there are those of us who never stick to one career path. We keep changing and restarting the learning cycle. We always building new foundations and never completing any building. Just when we should be getting beyond the average in our field we jump fields. We end up with so many unrelated skills and never rise above average at any skill.

I think the most productive way to work and live is to blend your work and life. Let them not be two never crossing lines. Better to do what you are passionate about, build a career out of it and live a life of harmony. And because you are passionate about what you are doing, you will always put in more effort to become better each day and you'll derive huge satisfaction that will positively impact all aspects of your life. You will become better and better, and soon rise beyond the craft stage and into the art stage. Everything you'll do will become more of art, closer to magic and perfection. People will value you and your work. Recognition and awards will roll in. And the time you spend at work will always be fun time.

This is going to be a quick and easy to replicate tip.

I will show you how to highlight duplicate values in a table in Excel. In MVP #51: Removing Duplicate Values In Excel I showed you how to remove duplicate values. But there are times you don't want to delete the duplicate values instantly; you want to see them and maybe show them to your colleague or boss before deciding what to do with them. So you would prefer to just highlight them.

For illustration, I have gotten a fictitious data sample from Domino's Pizza. For some days now the accounts haven't been balancing and one of the cashiers think it is her system that generates double entries for some sales transactions. And so the branch manager has engaged my expert help to extract the raw data from the system and bring it into Excel, then check if truly the system erroneously generates duplicate transaction records.

Each sales transaction has a unique ID, so a duplicate entry will have an ID that has already been recorded.

So let's proceed to fish out those suspect entries.

Highlight the Transaction ID column, goto Home menu, Conditional Formatting, Highlight Cell Rules and Duplicate Values.

Confirm the formatting to show up on duplicate IDs found.

Result is shown below.

The cashier is right. Her system is generating duplicate entries. The branch manager will need to have the system replaced.

That's how uniquely valuable being able to highlight duplicate entries is.

We all have dark days; days we just don't feel happy and motivated to do our usual activities. Days we feel we are not heading the right direction or we are not moving fast enough.

image: kaz-d.deviantart.com

The usual causes for me are:

1. when I suddenly notice lots of close pals getting on better than me with little efforts and having all the fun time in the world
2. when I try to think too far into the future, extrapolating my current state
3. when PHCN and traffic and the state of the country hit me hard on the same day
4. when I look too intensely at how slowly my life is progressing
5. when the internet that is meant to last a month finishes in less than a week, and
6. when I am just unhappy and depressed, and too depressed to find out why.

So how do I keep those days away?

Luckily, a large proportion of the usual causes for me are easy to avoid:

1. I no longer give people access to my WiFi so they don't run down my internet and I also try to make it last up to three weeks
2. I have managed to grow a very thick skin towards the state and affairs of the country. Everyday I tell myself that I live in a jungle and in a country that is a perfect example of what a squanderous life can become. I have turned the state of the country into a motivation to live productively.
3. I have become very less active on Facebook so I don't see all the day ruining pictures and updates of the people doing way better than me.

Then there are the causes I can't easily manage. I still have to think about my future and the path my life is following. Since finishing from university, all the significant progress I have made are in my CV and not in my bank account. And Benjamin Franklin's consolatory quote is losing its potency: "If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." Also there are those days I feel my life loses its contrast and brightness for no reason. 

How do I handle those days off?

I'll tell you, but it is not as easy as it seems. And also not as ridiculous as it sounds. I simply pray and read my way out of depression. It's one of the benefits of being a christian. You don't have to bear all your burdens alone, especially the ones weighing you terribly down. Then I read about people with worse troubles than me. I take courage in their situation and hope from their success.