Can you let go of stats for a while?

Are you a metrics junkie?

I am.

I also love to introspect. It is my way of making sure that things are on right track.

Checking stats for my personal blog is one of my favorite pass times. I recently noticed that I was checking my blog stats more often than I should.

When traffic (people visiting web properties) is on an upswing it is exciting to check you stats and see how more and more visitors from across the world come to read what you have written.

Guess this is linked to happiness and result driven mentality.  When you see people are visiting and leaving comments, you feel that people like what you are writing. It is ego boosting and drives you to do more work.

Let us look at other side of it.

Traffic is reward for what you worked on earlier. But unless you do work that is important – there will be no traffic.

Checking stats is like making a note of what happened in the past – in life. What has happened – has happened and you checking it will not make any difference. It may give you some joy if things have been good - learnings to take home, if things were not good. But nothing beyond it.

In any case  not good to rest on your laurels.

It make sense to create fresh.

So, time for me to go off-stats and on to doing work that matters.

I will not check any stats for one month.

For networks like Twitter, it is impossible not to notice numbers – but I will make a conscious attempt not to pay all of my attention to number of followers.

In cases where the numbers are hidden inside analytics software dashboard – I will not open that dashboard for a month.

Why I am doing this?

Because I think it is good to question your way of doing things once in a while, even if they are working ok.

For past couple of months – I have been in high metrics mode.

Checking metrics for the blog – other websites/businesses I run. Thankfully they have been on an upswing. Seeing how many tickets did we sell for a conference like TEDxGurgaon is important. It is a not for profit event, still I needed to make sure that we sell enough tickets – not to lose money.

But even when it is important - too much checking takes you away from real stuff.

Our success comes from making art, doing work that needs to be done first more than anything. Stats may be relevant to some – to some extent but not for all of us.

So, time to make art for me and do things that matter.

To reiterate, I will not check any digital metrics for a month – unless I am responsible for someone else’s money.

Wish me luck

And what about you?

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