avatarAkaahan Terungwa

Summarize

The Medium Stats Page Change and the Good News of Concentration

Behind whatever appears to be a challenge, is a blessing, waiting to be unveiled…

Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

I’m a staunch believer that all that happens contains serious seeds of good, if we look hard and intently enough.

While this is difficult at times when things don’t go the way we expect them to — or appear to work directly against our interests — this theory hasn’t failed me, ever.

Not a single time, before.

However, when Medium changed the rendering of its stats page yesterday and I lost over 1000% (figure expressed to show the relation of loss to pre-change daily average) of my earnings overnight, it was difficult to see how this could be any good — or even remotely contain any seed of good.

But, less than 48 hours later, I found serious good in all of it.

If, you were distressed like I was and miss the old bars, here are some good reasons to look forward to the new system with excitement (or at least, make them work for you).

A Truer State of Things

Medium has not yet offered any official statement as to the stats page changes.

However, the consensus from other authors who have written about the change is to the effect that comment views have been removed — which explains why much lower figures are now the norm, across the board.

This makes perfect sense and it’s a welcome, even healthy development, I must say.

The comments bloated things up — and offered an exaggerated view of things, at least for me.

Now, the stats show themselves in their true glory, reflecting only the views that count: story views.

This is an improvement, looking back and then, forward.

Concentration (on other Projects)

Steve Jobs once argued that you can only connect the dots looking back, not forward.

I agree, completely — and it is very true in the instant case.

The old stats page updated in real-time and despite my advice of leaving it alone, I failed, countless times, every day.

On good days, I loved how the graph shot upward, towering against the previous days to strike its record.

On such days, I was like a 12-year-old gamer, refreshing the stats page frequently and fervently hoping it would become my best yet.

The feeling of outdoing myself was strong — and I always had a way of falling flat to it, all the time.

Conversely, on days that the bar did not indicate signs of positive, upward movement, I got a little upset and wondered what had happened or what I had done wrong (possibly).

Having spent over a decade online, one would expect that I’d have outgrown such baby tendencies by now.

Unfortunately, I still have not!

The grand implication?

I wound up wasting precious time checking on the stats page — or worrying about it— time that would have been deployed to something else, like one of my numerous side projects.

With the new stats regime, I only need to check once a day and frankly, I have even lost interest in checking, at all.

Talk of something good coming out when you least expect it!

Now, more time and energy to pursue my other numerous interests, both online and off.

Fending off (Medium) Addiction

I’ve always struggled with social media addiction and thorough procrastination.

When I believed that had been put under check, instant messaging reared its ugly head up — and it was another round of challenges!

Just around the time when I believed I was losing the battle, I rediscovered Medium and devoted my time to it — in an active attempt to kill the social media and instant messaging spirits.

I justified this with the thought that Medium isn’t social media (funny, isn’t it?) and that, my time here was spent well.

While the latter is true, the former is, unfortunately, false — and I needed the stats dance to break the Medium addiction that was becoming my reality.

Correlation, in this case, does not imply causation but I’m grateful, looking back, that the dots are connecting nicely.

Wrap-Up And Going Forward

The Medium stats dance that happened recently was a nice blessing in disguise, at least, for me:

  1. It brings forward a truer sense of things, ditching the over-bloated stats that gave one a sense of importance — when nothing important was/is happening, in the real sense.
  2. Because the stats page isn’t (now) updated in real-time, it aids with concentration on other online tasks (plus more rewarding Medium activities than refreshing it).
  3. It has put a stop to the unhealthy addiction to Medium that had started forming.

There’s no better way to wrap up than to leave you with this quote:

Everything happens for a reason, whether it’s something you’re excited about or not. It’s all for a purpose in the big picture. Enjoy the process knowing it will be used to make you stronger in the long run. Sometimes certain events are necessary in order for a grander opportunity to cross our paths.

Brittany Burgunder

PS: Does It Mean All Is Now Well?

NO. Far from it.

However, I’ve chosen to focus on the positive bits as far as I can see while ignoring the not-so-positive.

For context, Sanjay Singhal’s A Glaring Error in Medium’s Updated Statistics and TzeLin Sam’s Medium Earnings: Is This the Nightmare Before Christmas? adequately convey my frustrations and leave nothing new for me to type up.

There’s no need to repeat these points; I also choose not to focus on them….

Medium
Medium Partner Program
Long Live Grandma Smillew
Mindset
Mindset Shift
Recommended from ReadMedium