Power BI Users Are Quietly Letting Go of EARLIER... and It’s Emotional!

If EARLIER once “fixed everything” for you in Power BI, this will feel uncomfortably familiar. Read on.

Author

Glenda Carnate
January 30, 2026

Read time: 2.5 minutes

A long time ago, the only solution for many of us was to use EARLIER multiple times throughout the same row.

At one point or another, during our Power BI journey, someone will tell us with certainty: “Just use EARLIER”, and we have gotten the correct amount back without really understanding it, so we nod again and move along.

At some point, after using these measures for many years, you return to that logic with variable support and better patterns are in place, and now you realize that you do not need to use EARLIER anymore. It's no longer the \"mastery\" you thought you owned for years, but rather a tool that you have outgrown.

How to Understand What it Means to Let Go of EARLIER in Power BI?

1. EARLIER isn't a destination but rather an alternative method of working around something that was immature in tooling and patterns. However, it does not protect from the future.

2. Most, if not all legit use for EARLIER have been replaced by variables. Variables are easier to debug and to explain to someone else after 6 months.

3. Attempting to transfer or reorg a measure that contains EARLIER logic will be visible rapidly to both analyst and management alike. If an analyst has difficulty touching the measure, it is unlikely due to their ability.

4. The modern Power BI environment favors clear, easily readable DAX over intricate, complex DAX.

💡Key Takeaway: 

EARLIER was not a mistake... it was a stepping stone, letting go of allows for a new maturing business intelligence approach and paves the way to a design approach.

👉 LIKE this if you had saved your Power BI Dashboards using EARLIER at 2:00 A.M.

👉 SUBSCRIBE now for real-world Power BI insights that age well.

👉 Follow Glenda Carnate for sharp takes on DAX, governance, and analytics maturity.

👉 COMMENT with the first time you realized you didn’t need EARLIER anymore.

👉 SHARE this with someone still carrying EARLIER in production.

Reply

or to participate.