The Internet measures everything. And I am a slave to those measurements. After so many years of pushing much of my life through this screen, I’ve started measuring my experiences and my sense of self-worth using the same metrics as the Internet uses to measure success. I check my stats relentlessly. The sad truth is that I spend more time measuring than I spend doing.
Fantastic read over at Tweetage Wasteland : I Don’t Care if You Read This Article. Or put another way “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Hat tip: Mark Riley.
Didn’t read it 🙂
I think that’s why I blog for the air. Maybe there’s at least one person interested in what I write.
I mean: I’m in the opposite side, my blog is not famous and I don’t know so much about the few visits there are… I blog just because I think I’m contributing to someone 🙂
Its true.. Its the state you have reached that makes you addicted to measuring
btw very witty title.. it made me anxious
Life is not something to be measured. Life is something to be enjoyed. 🙂
I agree with that statement to a degree. I often check things and comments on my blog then I do actually “doing” anything productive.
great article. It’s funny because even those of us who aren’t in ‘publishing’ or professionally putting out stuff also have this thing where, I make a slightly joking status, and then I check the facebook likes on it, the twitter faves on it, regular communication can become measured in the strange professional way that TV shows are. The trick is just to make the conscious decision to be yourself organically rather than become a slave to going for what’s going to get the views, the feedback, the immediate results. One thing I’ve been thinking about in that front is just separating out your accounts–this is your personal twitter account in which you say whatever you want regardless of whether the audience is ‘interested’ in each topic; that’s your professional account in which you deliver stuff that’s actually tailored to the followers, etc.
That’s so true – when my book was first published, I checked the Amazon ratings several times an hour!
I just had to stop as it was driving me crazy. There are some things that are just best left alone – I think that there are times when you need to see if what you are doing is making an impact, but it should only be a tiny proportion of the time you actually spend trying to make that impact.
I guess that finding the right, healthy balance is key.
Well Matt
I used to do this to until I noticed that I was once of the best in my niche (military history) – now I don’t even give a look anymore to the stats because I had even to use a pay for access (1$/month) to reduce the traffic in my blog. I thought this would work but after 1 month they all do pay the buxe to get access … so I would say – forget the stats and work – that’s the only way things goes on here
Gunter
Belgium
Hi Matt-
LOVE the look and feel of your blog. What stat plug-in are you using. I miss the free stats that came with wordpress.com. Since I’ve switched to self-hosted, I can’t seem to find/correctly install and use something that is as easy and works the same way. Since you are into your stats, I thought you might be able to help.
Thanks!
Install Jetpack and you’ll be set.
Well, I guess there is no Google analytics for your personal goals in life. Not yet, rumors are going on that they are working on it….
Oh nice! I was thinking how come you end up being so rude . 😉
” And I was reminded again that the proudest achievements in life just can’t be measured.” The thing is that everything in life is measurable but some of these are understood and make sense because of the context and the greater pattern recognition abilities we humans improved over thousands of years.