Why I Stopped Obsessing Over Sales Dashboards

A curious thing has happened over the past little while. I stopped checking my sales dashboard.

Not entirely, of course. I’m still a published author, not a mystic who’s renounced all earthly concerns. But I no longer open it first thing in the morning. I don’t refresh it throughout the day. I don’t try to interpret every small rise and fall as if I’m examining the entrails of a chicken.

And—perhaps unsurprisingly—everything feels… better.

For a long time, I treated those numbers as a kind of barometer. Not just of how the books were doing, but of how I was doing. A good day meant I was on the right track. A slow day suggested I’d missed something, done something wrong, or needed to do things quickly – launch an ad or a promotion, tweak a post.

It’s an exhausting way to work.

Because the truth is, those numbers are always lagging indicators. They reflect the decisions I made weeks or months ago. They didn’t tell me if what I was doing today was working. They certainly didn’t tell me if I was building something that would last.

And yet, those same numbers are very good at creating the illusion of control.

There’s another layer to this that took me longer to recognize. It wasn’t just about tracking performance. It was about attaching meaning to it. Particularly meaning about my worth.

A good day didn’t just mean the books were selling—it meant I was doing well. That I was getting something right. That perhaps I was, in some small way, enough.

And a slow day… well. That suggested the opposite.

It’s a subtle shift, but an important one. Because at that point, I was no longer observing data—I was feeding a feedback loop. Small spikes of validation. Small dips of doubt. Over and over again. So the thinking goes: If I just check often enough, tweak enough, react quickly enough … perhaps I can influence the outcome.

It looks like productivity. It feels like staying informed. But in reality, it’s just a very effective way to tie your sense of worth to something you don’t directly control. And that isn’t useful.

What is useful, and moves things forward, is quieter, and far less immediately satisfying.

• It’s writing the next chapter when no one is watching.
• It’s revising a scene until it actually works, even if no one will ever know how many versions it took.
• It’s building small, steady assets—blog posts, Pinterest pins, newsletters—that slowly accumulate into something larger than any one piece.

None of that shows up on a dashboard right away.

Which makes it very easy to undervalue the bullet points above.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve shifted my attention almost entirely to those things. Not because I’ve suddenly become more disciplined or enlightened, but because I’ve realized that I was spending far too much energy watching results instead of creating causes.

And causes are the only part we actually control.

The interesting part is what happened next.

Without the constant checking, the emotional volatility smoothed out. There were no small spikes of excitement followed by equally small dips of discouragement. Just… work. Steady, consistent, occasionally satisfying work. The kind that doesn’t feel dramatic, but does compound.

I’ve also noticed something else.

When I’m not preoccupied with how things are performing, I make better decisions. I’m less reactive. More willing to let things run long enough to gather meaningful data. More inclined to build systems rather than chase quick wins.

In other words, I behave more like someone building a body of work, and less like someone hoping for a lucky break.

This isn’t to say that sales don’t matter. Of course they do. Books are meant to be read, and I’d very much like mine to find their way into the hands of readers.

But watching the numbers doesn’t make that happen. The work does.

So these days, I check less. I write more. I build things that will still exist next month, next year, and (with any luck) much longer than that.

It’s quieter, less dramatic. And, I suspect, far more effective.