Myke Hurley, filling in for Stephen over at 512pixels, explains why he stopped paying attention to stats and numbers:
“At one point, 70Decibels had 12 active shows. At the time, I was checking performance for each one – logging into separate hosting accounts – multiple times per day. I was consumed by the numbers. I obsessed daily, weekly and monthly—desperately trying to find some sort of formula or correlation to achieving success.
Even after we were able to get long-term sponsors on board, I was still meticulously checking these numbers—it became a habit. I wanted to ensure that I was doing the right thing and I felt like I could only find vindication and answers in the graphs.
But then something changed. After listening to that SXSW talk earlier this year I started to consider things differently.”
I've been quite guilty of this same behavior. Always checking my page views, seeing how many people have faved that tweet I'm proud of, worrying about how many subscribers/followers I've got at any given time...none of this is healthy behavior (ahem, sorry Myke, behaviour).
In the last couple of months, I've quickly learned that having thousands of page views doesn't necessarily equate to gaining legions of new, loyal readers. Only a tiny percent of these are what I would call quality page views, and that's been a valuable lesson for me to learn.
Thanks to some much-needed perspective, I feel like I've broken out of some kind of deranged fever. I hardly worry about the stats anymore, and simply try to do good work as often as I'm able. It's good to hear that someone like Myke, a guy I hold in high regard whether he knows it or not, has had the same revelation.
