Four dashboards, two opens
I built four dashboards last year. Revenue, traffic, email, content. Beautiful, all of them.
I opened one of them twice.
The problem was never the dashboard. It was that I built them to feel in control rather than to answer a question I actually had.
The test I use now
Before building any view, I write down the decision it changes. If I cannot name one, I do not build it.
"Traffic is up" changes nothing. "Three of my last ten posts brought in 80% of signups, and they are all the same format" changes next week.
The one metric
Not revenue. Revenue is a lagging number that tells you about work you finished two months ago.
The number I watch is how many days this week I shipped something a stranger could see.
It is embarrassingly simple and it has been the best predictor of every good month I have had.
Also this week
The archive got rebuilt. Every past issue is now filterable by year, topic and the tools it covers.
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