That’s it! I’ve had it with this shit...

I’m quitting looking at Google Analytics.

I’m wasting so much damn time doing it.

After I deploy some code, I’ll pop it open while I have a few free minutes. “Why not? I got a couple free minutes…”

I love seeing that “real-time” view in the upper right corner - I get a small dopamine rush seeing that people are on my website right now!

This is not my analytics page but boy does that number look nice...

I probably look at it 10 times a day.

When I start the day… “Oh let’s check the traffic for yesterday”, then after that, “Oh, let’s go check email subscribers now”, and after that “let’s see how many Google search impressions we got”...

Before I know it, I’ve spent a good 15 minutes in “analytics land”.

It’s so fucking addicting.

I don’t know if other people experience this, but I think it’s sort of unhealthy.

It also affects my mood. Seeing it go up gets me so excited. Seeing it go down puts me in a shitty mood. That’s not healthy.

How I’m quitting

So, for the rest of the month, I’m blocking myself from looking at Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Klaviyo (my email list), etc.

I want to see if I can do this, and I want to see how it will affect my psyche and my productivity.

When I will look at it

At the end of the month, I will set aside a block of time to do an analysis for the entire month.

I still think it’s important to look at metrics, but it’s more valuable to do so at a higher level and over a longer period of time.

Looking at analytics daily can also influence knee jerk decisions.

For example - if I make a change to my CTA for email signups. I should be looking at the conversion rate over the course of many weeks, rather than 1-2 days after I make the change.

Focusing on more controllable metrics

Instead of focusing on traffic and email subscribers, I should focus on content output and features.

These are things that are mostly in my control - they are the “levers” that I can pull.

Need to make myself accountable

I’ve always wanted to look at analytics less but never thought of any good ways to do it.

I wanted to write this blog post to state my intentions and make myself a bit more accountable.

If you experience this too, join me!