Living by numbers? What if you and I quit?

Since I moved the site from MarshallJonesJr.wordpress.com to MarshallJonesJr.com last month, I haven’t checked any traffic stats here. When WordPress.com hosted the site, it offered a built-in tracking system. That meant each time I logged in to update anything on the site, I’d see the traffic numbers.

I’m not against numbers. Ever since I got online, I’ve tracked all my sites… until recently. I think tracking numbers is a good way to test what works and improve.

However… it got ridiculous.

I started this blog as an experiment, as a way to hash out my thoughts. In the beginning, I didn’t even tell anyone about it. Slowly, I opened up by sharing it on Facebook. Now a few more friends know about it. 🙂 I’ve been insanely blessed.

As I continued to see the numbers increase and then fluctuate, I started allowing those stats to dictate my attitude. Large numbers = good attitude. Small numbers = not so good attitude.

Over the past couple weeks without the numbers, I’ve felt liberated. I didn’t realize how much they affected me. Now I wonder how other people, people like you, might feel if they didn’t worry about results and numbers.

• Like if you didn’t worry about grades, how would you behave in school?
• If you didn’t worry about your sales numbers, the one that happens to correlate with your Christmas bonus, if that didn’t matter to you… what would you do for your company?
• What if you played sports without points?
• What if you stopped eating at “meal time”? Or stopped paying attention to time altogether?
• What if you never counted your money… or how much you spent?

Last year, I read 46 books. This year, I haven’t counted. I’m just curious.

Someone once said that things you can count are things you can improve. That’s usually accurate. But I’m wondering if perhaps all the focus on “improvement” is just stressing us out and distracting us from what really matters. Because in the end, numbers rarely do.