My emotional health is competely dictated by my analytics

Raise your hand if you relate:

You wake up in the morning and before you brush your teeth, have your coffee or even wipe the crust off of your eyes, you are checking your analytics, statistics, and earnings.

AMIRIGHT?

If you are like me, you have 100’s of sites that you are watching at any given time:

• your “money sites”
• brand sites / company blog
• client sites
• friends sites
• affiliate sites

As well as other statistics and metrics such as:

• engagement metrics on social media
• PPC CTR on traffic sources such as Facebook and Google (also check this for easy CTR calculation)
• income generated from CPA sales
• and so much more

I’ve been “in the game” now for about 5 years and by the game I mean 100% self-employed with 100% of my income coming from internet revenue. I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I live in a 4 bedroom rental with my wife and son, and I drive a used Hyundai.

With that in mind, its a different kind of stress than working for the man. Especially when you start to get 2, 5, now close to 20 people working under you (me).

The stress of working at a 9-5 comes from office politics, feeling inadequate, having a bad boss, and poor working conditions.

The stress of working for yourself comes in many different forms. For me it is constantly coming up with new ideas to promote new products using new traffic sources using new creatives & images.

Analytics (ok only kind of) drives my emotional health

“Wow, you need to get some help, Patrick!”

Is what you might be thinking.

At least I am being honest, back off!

I’m not saying that I walk around depressed or constantly stressed out, but analytics do play a large role in how I feel on a day to day basis.

If I wake up and have a huge traffic spike on one of my affiliate sites resulting in a bunch of sales, I walk around with a little more pep in my step that day. I’ll treat myself to a venti latte. Sure, why not.

On the other hand, if I wake up and see my CTR tanked 3 days in a row and overall impressions are down.

MY LIFE IS COMING TO AN END

I know what you are going to say next:

“Patrick you can’t live your life like that. You have to look at your analytics as a ‘big picture’ and not freak out on an hour to hour basis.”

Tell that to the guy who made my dashboard app.

My resolve: how I learned to chill

I reached out to a few friends and my wife for some help and this is the plan that I’ve come up with. I’ve put it into action now for about 3 months and I feel 70% better on a day to day basis. I make

1. Do not use any device for the first hour I wake up including television (stock market) phone, or laptop. Don’t check texts, return calls or even look at anything.
2. Take at least 1 full day off per week
3. Only check analytics 1-2 times per day
4. When I am “with” my family, completely disconnect

The main problem was waking up and checking analytics right away. I generally don’t wake up until about 11am and even on a good day, I am not a morning person.

I wanted to write this blog post up as a way to kind of connect with people that are in my shoes without any structure of sorts and that might be feeling the same way.