Why I Stopped Refreshing My Stats

And you should too.

I started writing on Medium as a hobby. In the beginning, I would spend days writing, rewriting, and polishing an article before hitting the publish button.

The process of writing itself was the reward for writing back then.

But as time went by, it soon became an obsession. I would spend all day trying to come up with story ideas, submitting to big publications, dreaming about becoming famous, constantly checking my email, and refreshing my stats every few seconds.

In one word, it became stressful.

A couple of nights ago, as I lay in bed, the thoughts running through my brain were “I need to come up with ideas”, “How do I get more followers and views?”, “How do I write stories that get curated?”, “How do I get published in XYZ publication?” etc.

A mounting mix of excitement, anxiety, and stress led to a full-blown panic attack which jolted me awake as I was slipping into sleep. The fear of going through another bout of insomnia kept me awake all night.

This made me really take a step back and think.

“Why did something that started as a fun hobby become a source of stress around which my life revolved?”

I saw clearly how I started writing for fun and was now gravitating towards writing to earn.

This introspective exercise helped me snap out of my Medium obsession.

I realized that the plethora of stories on my homepage flexing earnings, about radical first-month successes, with “Write every single day” advice, etc. played a major role in making me feel stressed out.

I decided to shift my focus from the result to the process — from the stats to writing.

I no longer refresh my stats every few seconds or stress myself out all day thinking of what to write next.

I write only when and what I feel like writing. No need to write subpar pieces or ones I didn’t feel like writing about just for the sake of writing.

Since adopting this mindset it feels like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders and I have begun to again fall in love with the process of writing which I had almost come to hate.

Writing personal honest stories that only a few people genuinely appreciate is much better than writing generic glib unoriginal stories that a lot of people just skim through.

I am a writer and I write for myself and my readers — irrespective of how few they are.