Here’s Why Excel Is So Unproductive, and How to Fix It

SUMMARY: Most Excel users are unaware of the broken Excel strategy in which they’re immersed. The strategy wastes time, hides insight, and burns out talent. This article exposes the cost of that hidden strategy and introduces a scalable, all-Excel alternative, with help from ChatGPT—which reduces errors and slashes reporting times. To implement the strategy, click here.

Like fish unaware of water, most Excel users are immersed in a failed strategy without realizing it.

An analyst gets a data file. Opens an old report. Duplicates it. Adjusts the formulas. Checks them randomly. Patches what breaks. Sends it off. That same routine plays out period after period—in companies of all sizes throughout the world.

That non-strategy Excel strategy is what I call Excel’s Scutwork Strategy. It’s not official. But it’s universal.

No two reports are structured the same way. No two users follow the same process. When people leave the team, their workbooks break—and no one else can fix them.

It’s been the default for decades. And it won’t change—not until a truly productive strategy takes its place.

The Role of Training in Strategic Failure

The Scutwork Strategy was baked into how Excel users were trained—and weren’t trained.

Nearly all Excel training has focused on its tools. We’ve learned how to use formulas, commands in the Ribbon, and keyboard shortcuts. That has given us the idea that knowing more Excel features and clicking faster will make us more productive.

We were wrong.

Even if we learned every feature in Excel, we’d be unable to build a productive and scalable Excel workflow. Similarly, a carpenter could become an expert in every carpentry tool—and still have no idea how to build a house.

That’s Excel’s Tool Trap.

Current training encourages Excel users to learn rarely used and easily forgotten Excel knowledge—instead of teaching them ultra-productive ways to generate useful insights quickly and accurately.

So we shouldn’t be surprised when users burn out trying to keep up with strict reporting deadlines.

The truth is, Excel burnout isn’t the fault of Excel or its users. It’s the fault of Excel’s Scutwork Strategy.

What Low Excel Productivity Is Costing You

If your company relies on Excel for reporting and analysis—and most do—the cost of Excel’s Scutwork Strategy is enormous.

Every hour spent rebuilding a report is time not invested in looking for new insights in your data. Every error in a fragile workbook slows down decisions. Every new report means another report to create and maintain—which slashes the time available for discovering new insights.

And because nothing is standardized, nothing is reusable. So the same reports get recreated again and again, period after period.

This isn’t just about lost time. It’s about lost insight. Lost momentum. Lost opportunity.

And that cost is multiplied across every Excel user on your team.

The Excel Strategy You Were Never Taught

The good news is that there’s nothing inevitable about any of this.

There’s a better strategy, a new strategy, one that’s designed to solve the underlying problems with Excel productivity, and even Excel analytics.

Instead of relying on scutwork, this strategy flows data—like water—from one or more sources, through our workbooks, to our reports, analyses, forecasts, and so on.

It’s called the Excel Data Plumbing (EDP) Strategy. And its followers and called Excel Data Plumbers.

The EDP Strategy is a true strategy. It’s a structured, repeatable, and automatable way to work in Excel. It transforms Excel scutwork into Excel brainwork—so instead of chasing broken formulas, you’re generating insights, telling stories with data, and delivering real value to your company.

EDP is the Brainwork Strategy for Excel users. It replaces chaos with flow. Fire drills with refreshable dashboards. Burnout with creativity. And report generation with strategic thinking.

If you’re still following the Scutwork Strategy, you’re stuck in Excel’s past.

The Brainwork Strategy—the EDP Strategy—is Excel’s future.

With this strategy, you don’t just use Excel more efficiently—you design your work so that ultra-productivity becomes the default. One command can update everything. And your time shifts from fixing broken reports to asking and answering better questions.

That’s what a real strategy makes possible.

And with GenAI tools entering the mainstream—tools like ChatGPT and Copilot—the stakes are even higher. AI tools can accelerate insight—but only if your data is structured, accessible, and reliable. Without that foundation, GenAI just automates the chaos.

What Changes for Managers

If you manage a team that uses Excel, the shift from scutwork to brainwork matters more than you might think.

Because you’re not just buying back time. You’re changing the trajectory of your team’s work.

Structured Excel dataflows reduce errors, accelerate reporting, and increase the value of every insight your team delivers. They let your best people focus on what they were actually hired to do: generate as many useful results as possible.

You stop managing around delays and last-minute fixes. You stop firefighting. You start leading an ultra-productive team.

And with GenAI reshaping how insights are generated, that shift is no longer optional. GenAI can amplify your team’s impact—but only if their data is structured, consistent, and ready to flow. Without that foundation, AI just accelerates the mess.

Success begins with one decision: stop supporting the wrong strategy!

About 375 million years ago, fish left the water and began to walk on land. And the world has never been the same ever since.

Where the Change Begins

Most Excel users were never taught how to flow data like water. And most managers had no idea that such a thing is possible.

The shift begins by acknowledging that the strategy behind the work matters more than the work itself.

When you replace Excel’s Scutwork Strategy with one designed to scale ultra-productively, everything changes—from the quantity and quality of your insights to the morale of your team.

And when Excel finally works the way it should, your business moves faster, too.

Scutwork or brainwork? It’s your choice.

To learn how the Excel Data Plumbing (EDP) Strategy works, check out How to Escape Scutwork: A New Excel & AI Strategy for Ultra-Productivity.

To learn about the surprisingly high opportunity cost of the Ad Hoc Design Strategy, read It’s Just Math—Excel Scutwork’s High Opportunity Cost.

To learn about Excel analytics, read The EDP Strategy: Your New Path to Excel Analytics.

And if you want to get started, join the EDP Institute now.