I agree that “obsessively checking one’s stats” isn’t productive, but…your goal is 400–500 fans per day? And it pays the bills? No wonder you don’t need to check your stats. You’re doing fine.

I bought an annual paid membership on Medium at the beginning of this calendar year and since then have poured hours into carefully writing 13 articles. (Over the last decade or two, I’ve written a thousand articles across various platforms — I’m just talking about Medium now.) I’ve tried different subjects: philosophy, politics, films. The shortest is a 2-minute read, and the longest a 55-minute read. One is in Spanish with the assistance of a professional proofreader who is a native speaker. I use images. I share the links on my social media. I’ve put so much effort into them.

A Medium article I write is, on average, clicked on by fewer than 13 people; of those, fewer than 5 read to the end; of those, only 1 person becomes a “fan” by clapping. Not daily — ever. Usually, the person who claps is my Mom or Dad, because I remind them.

That average applies to 12 of the 13 articles I’ve written.

My outlier 13th article, my “greatest hit,” now six months old — a long philosophical discussion that I wanted to write for two decades and finally published as a “half-hour read” on Medium — was shared in a discussion forum on Reddit and has been clicked 187 times. 22 people have read to the end. No one has clapped. I find that a bit odd: Two dozen people thought the article was worth a half-hour of their time, yet it occurred to no one to clap for free so that I could earn a nickel?

All of which is to say, when I write an article, I can usually count on Mom or Dad to clap. I’ve earned a total of $1 on this platform all year.

I write what is important to me. I check my stats to find out if another human being has noticed that my articles exist. Checking my stats is an unproductive use of thirty seconds, given that the answer is usually negative. But I want to know if it changes, because that would tell me whether I’m succeeding at something.