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Why Deleting One Minus Sign Means You Deserve to Leave Work Early (and Brag About It)?

Hours of doubt, fixed in just one tiny keystroke.

Author

Glenda Carnate
January 09, 2026

Read time: 2.5 minutes

Some days you gear up for a deep dive, only to realize the problem was never complex... it was just hiding in plain sight.

You spend hours doubting your logic, rechecking the model, rereading docs, and wondering if you somehow forgot how your own measure works. The numbers are almost right, which makes it worse.

Then you see it. One minus sign, which is silently flipping everything downstream. You remove it, refresh, and suddenly the metric behaves exactly as it should.

No rewrite. No refactor. Just relief... that’s when you close the laptop and decide an early exit is fully justified.

What moments like this actually teach you?

  1. Most bugs are not clever.
    They are small, silent, and confident enough to waste your afternoon.

  2. Complex systems fail for simple reasons.
    Set analysis, DAX, SQL... different tools, same lesson.

  3. Fatigue makes symbols dangerous.
    A single character can undo an entire line of thinking.

  4. Debugging is often about slowing down.
    Not adding more logic, just reading what is already there.

  5. Experience teaches pattern recognition, not perfection.
    You learn what to look for because you have been burned before.

💡Key Takeaway: 

Leaving early is not about finishing fast. It is about recognizing when the problem is solved and refusing to overthink what is already done.

👉 LIKE this post if one character has ever stolen your time.

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👉 COMMENT with the smallest bug that caused the biggest headache.

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