I Stopped Checking My Stats (And Earnings) For 30 Days
Focus on creating. It’s what matters most anyway.
On March 1st, I challenged myself not to check my stats or earnings for the month.
I was becoming too fixated on the views, readership, and money. I’d review my stats six or seven times per day. Every night, I’d check my earnings only to feel disappointed by the small rise.
It was becoming a problem. Rather than thinking, “How can I be a better writer today?” I thought, “How can I make more money than yesterday?”
Right now, just ten months into my Medium journey, the earnings and stats should be the least of my worries.
I wanted to shift my focus from the numbers to the writing.
While there’s nothing wrong with profoundly studying your stats once in a while, obsessively checking them every day isn’t doing you any favors.
Niklas Göke wrote a fantastic article about why your stats don’t accurately represent why your pieces do well or flop.
When you write an article and it doesn’t do well, it might not have anything to do with you. Perhaps it was the wrong timing. Save yourself the disappointment, just as I did.
Take a step back from the figures and dive into the art.
What happens when you become obsessed with your stats and earnings?
When you become obsessed with your numbers, you cease caring about your work. Your articles stop reflecting who you are. You only write what you think will succeed.
We need to write what works if we want to make money. That doesn’t mean we have to follow every trend — which is what we’ll do if we focus on the stats.
You won’t give yourself a chance to earn money (or gain views and reads) by being yourself and writing unique content.
Faith Ann wrote a piece about finding a balance between trending topics and sticking to your brand, which I recommend reading after this.
If writing is everything to you, and this is how you want people to remember you, you have to find ways to stand out. If you become obsessed with what works, you won’t do that. You’ll do what everyone else does for a buck.
When you study your low stats every day, you’ll become fixated on one goal: raising them.
Your goal should be to write great stories.
When you stop looking, you stop caring
Something unexpected happened about two weeks into this challenge: I stopped caring about the stats and earnings.
Now and then, I wanted to check them badly, but that was more out of pure curiosity.
I became utterly fixed in writing better articles and improving my skills. There was nothing else to do.
When you stop looking, you stop caring because you learn that the only thing that matters is growing yourself. Not the digits.
As time goes on, and you improve, the numbers will rise as a byproduct. Let that sink in.
You can ignore your stats for months. You could learn and read and write and write and write — and your figures would rise simply because you got better.
What’s the point of checking your earnings?
Constantly checking your earnings can hurt your self-esteem because low numbers can be discouraging. You want to avoid feeling discouraged, or else you’ll quit.
If you’re good at letting disappointment motivate you rather than hold you down (which takes practice), then you might not be in trouble. But if you are, you won’t make it far.
Either way, there’s no point in checking your earnings every night.
Most of us are still new to this Medium journey. Even if you’re a year into writing, you’re not going to find data that pleases you.
You don’t have to avoid checking how much you’ve made for a month. Check once a week instead.
Unless you’re making fifty-dollars per day, you won’t be happy with what you see. And that will encourage you to quit.
Don’t study your stats, study your work
Checking your stats every day is more detrimental than beneficial. Since the data doesn’t accurately represent why certain pieces do well, and others don’t study the work itself.
You’ll find answers that matter in your writing.
I used to check my stats when a piece failed and tried to figure out why. It never helped. Since you can’t rely on stats, go to the source itself.
Re-read your articles. Ask yourself about your headline. Do you like it now that you’ve published it, or could you have done better?
Does your introduction grab your reader’s attention? Can they grasp on to anything relatable right away? Will they continue thinking about your piece after, or was your conclusion flat?
You can study other people’s work, too. What are they doing differently from you? Why did they get 10,000 claps? How is their article formatted?
When I write a new piece, I think about how I can make it better than the last one I wrote. That should be your goal every time you sit down and write.
You can’t control how much money you’ll earn. So stop aiming to make more than you did yesterday.
Your articles won’t always improve. Sometimes, you’ll write ones worse than your last. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try.
Final words
Obsessively checking your stats won’t help you succeed. It’ll only hurt you because they’re probably low.
Instead, focus on your art, how you can stand out, and on improving. You’re a writer who wants to tell great stories, so tell them. Stop writing recycled material just because it works.
You might not make a lot of money right now, but in the long run, your actions will pay off.
If you find yourself disappointed every night because you only made two dollars, then stop checking your earnings. The solution is simple, so commit to it.
Focus on creating. It’s what matters most anyway.
For the rest of the month, I dare you not to check your earnings or your stats. For twenty-seven days, focus on writing articles.
Can you do it? I didn’t think I could, and I did. You might not think you can, but you will. Just watch.