Ditching the Stats on my Website
Last week I turned off the stats for my website. It had become an addiction, whereby I’d check them up to a dozen times a day! In any given moment of free time, I’d quickly open the WordPress app and do a quick check to see if the right pages had been visited and if my stats were on the rise!
It became a destructive habit that was causing me all sorts of grief, including, waking up at about 1 am most nights to check my phone!
Talk about a web of pain!
So I decided to just turn it off. And in consultation with Wifey, I decided I’d check it once a week. Knowing what is happening on my website is a critical part of running my business, but checking every other fleeting moment is not helpful. So once a week seems about right, and I’ll give it a thorough looking over and check it properly, rather than a quick moment of instant gratification.
There is a downside to the constant checking in of stats, progress and other measuring devices. It’s like weighing yourself daily, or checking your business bank account every other moment, it simply isn’t helpful. So instead of the metrics giving us information to create direction, they become a source of identity whereby our feelings rise and fall dependent on the external numbers.
For me, I realised my identity was becoming wrapped up in the fluctuating of stats. If people were reading what I was doing, I seemed to be happier. But on the flipside, if things were falling on deaf ears I got depressed and fell into a state of increased doubt, fear and worry.
It simply wasn’t worth it.
I’m more than my ability to draw a web click, and I need to withdraw from the stat counting beast for a period of time and let my identity return to its rightful place.
