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#110: The vantage advantage.
Shem Opolot
February 28, 2025
Hi! Welcome to The Friday Fix! You’re reading this because you probably stumbled upon this post somewhere on the internet instead of where it should be—in your inbox. But no worries; we can fix that.
Who am I? I’m Shem Opolot, a health professional turned content creator, passionate about helping people be their best selves in life and work.
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I have over ten years of work experience in healthcare, program management, and data analytics on two continents. So, I know a little about helping you work smarter
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I’ll occasionally make you laugh
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Hi! I'm Shem Opolot, and this is The Friday Fix, my weekly newsletter. If you've received it, you’re either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter (yes, I’m the kind of person who uses words like “latter”) camp and want to subscribe, then click on the shiny button below:
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Otherwise, grab a seat 🪑.
HAPPY FRIDAY 🎉 [I capitalized the greeting because it is, infact, that serious].
I realize it’s boiling uncovered where most of you are reading this from, but I bear no shame or remorse as I say that the weather is lovely over here. Spring and fall are a fashion lover’s playground, and I plan to roll up my sleeves and dive in the dirt.
In this season, and more often than not, most of your physiological problems can be solved by two simple prescriptive words: Drink water!
LIFE.
The vantage advantage.
Source: Jack Butcher, Visualize Value
Why are we incapable of disagreeing and remaining friends these days? Has it always been like this?
In 2017, after bagging my master’s degree and buoyant over the fact that I created my own job and got paid to go back to Uganda, everything was going right for me. Even the music was sublime: Frank Ocean gave us Chanel, DJ Khaled gave us I’m the One and Wild Thoughts, and Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You gave us ear cancer. I’d just started dating my eventual wife; I earned in USD and spent in shillings. Like I said, everything was going right for me.
Did I peak in 2017?
Well, it got better.
After hearing my lofty goals for my new position, one of my mentors offered me office space at one of the many project sites under his purview in Kololo—Uganda’s marquee neighborhood. So now, this young man, flush with cash and ambition and good music in his ears, had an office in Kololo.
And I loved that office.
For its convenience, for the air of importance it commanded, for the [fake] arrivism it communicated. But mostly, for Yusuf. You probably know a Yusuf. Diligent, always beaming with joy, honest, kind, and loyal. Every time you listen to them speak, you think if only things were different, they’d have the best in life. But they don’t. Instead, they dedicate their life to an institution that undervalues them, and they lack the credentials or savvy to get more. More income, more insurance. More security.
Yusuf will probably work until the day he dies.
Last month, Trump signed executive orders with the haste of an old man fleeing Father Time’s clutches, the impact of which shut down the project that employed Yusuf. I found out because the project’s death coincided with back-to-school season for Yusuf’s daughter.
***
I have two friends that did contract work for the U.S. government, and like Yusuf, the executive orders muted their morning alarms. But one of them is an obstinate—and optimistic—Trump supporter, while the other couldn’t remain in the same room as the Trump supporter during a party.
With my feet firmly planted in the international development sandbox, over the last month, I’ve heard countless stories of jobs and lives lost. I’ve also engaged in various vantage points of the argument for and against foreign aid, and one thing is certain: its a messy, contentious issue with real consequences for real people everywhere.
Separately but related, as Uganda squirms under Museveni’s heel, every day on Twitter people use big words to virtually sling shit at each other in argument for or against Museveni’s rule. Some say he brought peace, built roads, and electrified villages, while others say that progress is negligible, more a function of the passing of time than intentionality.
The world has always been on fire—whether by nature fighting to reclaim the territory humans stole or by humans—and that’s the one thing we all have in common. But, unfortunately, we don’t perceive the carnage from the same vantage.
Even as I type this, I feel like I’m walking a high rope, one adjective away from being canceled by you.
But, and I’ve said this before, empathy is the answer.
Imagine all of society as a group of people standing in one giant kumbaya circle, with each person observing the globe in the center of the circle with scattered flames all over it. It is true that yes, the globe is burning, but it is also true that we, in the circle, perceive the extent of the damage differently and therefore perceive things like urgency and the apportionment of blame differently.
But empathy—the ability to consider that perhaps the person on the other side of the circle might be hurting differently than we are—helps us know when it’s important to be right and when it’s important to read the room.
THINGS.
A quote.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
A picture.
I’m aggressively learning French, so this picture reminded me of the time we vacationed in Dakar, Senegal, and were forced to use ALL the [little] French we knew.
I love these hoochie shorts 😂
WORK.
Let me show you another way.
You have data:
You want to add up the total scores for each team, and you probably know how to do this.
You do something like this:
But, because you want better for yourself, you can also use a formula called BYROW like this:
BYROW performs your desired calculation by inspecting the rows in the range you select.
=BYROW(array, [function])
array — is your desired range, full of rows
function — is the desired calculation you want to perform. Instead of the sum, for example, you could find the product of the scores. Not sure why you’d do that, but you can.
BYROW is better because you can perform custom calculations. For example, if, for some reason, you wanted to add up only the first five rounds, you could do this:
LAMBA allows you to create your own function to do exactly what you want.
A little complex that last one, but start small and see how powerful BYROW (or BYCOL 👀) can be.
FUN.
The Friday Fix playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ Extend your ex some grace: what is narcissism?
✅ Play hide and seek with this ball and cloth simulation.
✅ Relax while you sculpt some digital pottery.
✅ Can you identify the city based on a POV video?
✅ Do you know these things about your partner?
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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