At some point, you leave the classroom.
No more desks bolted to the floor.
No more chalk dust on your sleeves.
No one asking you to “show your workings” in the margin.
You’re not a student anymore.
And yet… the formulas never really leave.
They just stop being written on blackboards and start living inside spreadsheets, methodologies, review notes, and budgets that somehow never quite stretch far enough.
Different setting.
Same logic.
Every auditor knows this instinctively.
You open Excel and you don’t think, I’m doing maths.
You think, I’m checking whether this holds.
Formulas everywhere.
Links. Dependencies. Assumptions stacked on assumptions.
Break one cell, and something downstream quietly collapses.
Excel teaches this lesson quickly:
Structure matters more than effort.
Relationships matter more than speed.
Somewhere along the way, another formula sneaks in.
It’s never written down.
Never formally taught.
But everyone knows it.
Fast.
Good.
Affordable.
Pick two.
It shows up in planning meetings.
In review notes.
In the quiet recalculations you make when time starts running out.
It’s treated like physics.
Unbreakable.
Natural law.
But here’s the strange part.
In Excel, we don’t accept trade-offs like that.
We don’t say, this formula can be accurate or efficient, but not both.
We don’t build spreadsheets that only work if you babysit them.
We design systems where effort compounds.
Where clarity makes speed safe.
Where structure holds even under pressure.
So why do we accept a different rule for the work itself?
Look at it properly, and the “pick two” rule starts to wobble.
Fast work isn’t dangerous on its own.
Unstable work is.
Quality doesn’t collapse because things move quickly.
It collapses when consistency is missing.
And value isn’t destroyed by efficiency.
It’s destroyed by rework, drag, and effort that never stacks.
That’s not a trade-off problem.
That’s a design problem.
This is where the equation finally belongs on the page.
Not as maths.
As a way of describing what actually happens when things are built properly.
What matters isn’t the symbols themselves.
It’s the behaviour they describe.
When simplicity (S1) removes friction, momentum returns.
When efficiency (E2) allows effort to compound, progress holds.
When clarity (C10) increases, everything downstream improves quietly, automatically.
Put those together, and something changes and Audit Brilliance (AB∞) happens.
You’re no longer choosing between speed, quality, and value.
You’re operating outside that triangle altogether and unlocking audit possibilities.
This isn’t theory.
It’s the same relief you feel when a spreadsheet finally holds.
When nothing wobbles.
When you trust it enough to move forward without bracing.
The formulas didn’t disappear when school ended.
They just grew up.
We’re almost at the point where this stops being a lesson and starts being something tangible.
For now, just notice this:
If a formula governs how your work behaves, it also governs how your work feels.
And when the structure is right, even complex things stop feeling heavy.
More soon.
Christiaan
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