I can tell you roughly how many people opened an email I sent last week. I can tell you where my website ranks for a phrase in Edmonton. I can see when somebody visited a proposal. I can see whether a client opened an email. I can see when a server throws an error, when somebody submits a form, when a Facebook post underperforms, when an SEO score drops, when a lead ghosts me, and when somebody is unhappy with something I did.
I am beginning to suspect that this may not be entirely healthy.
All of these things arrive through the same little rectangle. A server has stopped working. Somebody doesn't like a paragraph. Three fewer people clicked something than clicked it yesterday. Apparently, I am supposed to receive each of these developments with the appropriate level of concern, make an intelligent decision, and then get back to whatever I was doing before the rectangle informed me that I was doing it inadequately.
Very efficient. Tremendous improvement over having a moment's peace.
Mind you, I work in technology. I understand why these systems exist. If a server falls over, I want to know right fecking away. If a form is broken, I'd rather find out before spending a month congratulating myself on how quiet the support inbox has been, or worse having a client find out before me O.o. Feedback is useful. I've spent a fair amount of my working life wanting better information. It lets me sleep better at night knowing that the important things are being watched.
However, I don't remember asking for a live commentary track on my entire bloody existence.
Take the proposal. Once upon a time, you sent somebody a proposal and waited. Perhaps they liked it. Perhaps they didn't. Perhaps it was sitting under a coffee on their desk for a month slowly developing an artistic stain. Either way, eventually you would follow up and have an actual conversation about it and you'd be able to sit calmly and read a book while you wait.
Now you can know that they opened it at 10:43. In fact, you can get an alert the moment they opened the email.
And now, it is 11:17 and they haven't replied.
You have gained one piece of information and somehow created room for an entire detective novel. Was the price too high? Did the wording put them off? Are they showing it to a competitor? Should you follow up? Would following up reveal that you're sitting there watching them read it like a completely normal, well-adjusted business professional? Are they unhappy with the proposal? Did their dog knock their coffee onto the toaster, setting the house on fire, meaning the SignRequest notification at 10:43 was actually the last digital evidence of their existence? Have they been kidnapped? Should you call it in?
Perhaps they just went for an early lunch.
You still know bugger all about what they're thinking, but now you know it with a timestamp.
That's the part that gets me. We can collect all these little signals without receiving the explanation that would make them useful. A number goes down, and I'm left to supply the story. So obviously, I choose a calm, proportionate story in which everything is my fault and the business is doomed. Very scientific. Put it in a spreadsheet and it's basically peer-reviewed at this point. I'm working on a PRL submission with points of data that make a beautiful line.
Even though the sane response might be to wait until Thursday and go have a coffee or martini with a colleague.
Yet, waiting until Thursday feels strangely irresponsible when you can refresh something on Tuesday. The information is available, so surely a conscientious person would look. And once you've looked, surely you should do something. There must be a setting to adjust, a sentence to rewrite, a follow-up to send. Otherwise, what was the point of looking? The alert was there, it's obviously important.
I can see how an afternoon disappears into that. Every little intervention feels like work, and some of it probably is. At the end, the thing I actually needed to finish is still sitting there, patiently waiting for me to stop supervising the Internet.
Even the pleasant feedback has a catch. A post does well, and suddenly there's a number to beat. You write the next one with a tiny imaginary marketing department leaning over your shoulder, suggesting that the sincere bit could use a stronger hook. You go from one fluke post that gets 12,000 impressions in a day on LinkedIn to the next 20 posts barely clearing 200.
"Kelly, you need to get your numbers up or we are going to have to implement other actions..."
Thank you, tiny imaginary marketing department. Please feck off.
I like knowing that something I've written reached somebody. Of course I do. I'm putting this on the Internet, which would be a peculiar choice if I wanted absolutely no response. But I would also like to finish a thought before finding out whether it has performed adequately. Now, ironically, this blog, I don't track anything... for a reason. This is my personal blog, if 1 person reads it or 1 million, I really don't want to know. I want to be able to barf my ideas onto the web and maybe, just maybe, ten years from now something I wrote here will make a positive difference to somebody. Like the NHL taking on relegation, anyone? :D
When I was younger, I learned to play guitar partly because the computer took so long to download things. There was a gap, and I filled it by being fairly terrible at something until I became less terrible. I wasn't posting daily progress videos. The guitar didn't email me a weekly summary explaining that my engagement with G major was down fourteen percent. Albeit, I still cheat with my G chord, don't tell anyone.
At the time though, I just played. Eventually, I could make music.
I think about that more than I expected to. How much room there was in an ordinary delay. How something good grew there while I was impatiently waiting for something else.
There are still things I want to give that sort of room. A conversation that wanders somewhere unexpected. Helping somebody through a problem that takes longer than either of us wanted. Making something because the idea won't leave me alone. I'd like to be present for those things without part of me checking whether something more measurable needs attention. Strangely, even AI has occasionally reintroduced a tiny version of this. I'll give it something genuinely complicated to chew on, and for a minute or two there's nothing useful for me to do but wait. Apparently we've made computers so fast that I now appreciate the rare occasions when they're slow again.
And, yes, this is getting dangerously close to the inspirational bit. Someone fetch a photograph of a lake before I embarrass myself.
I don't have a tidy solution. Some alerts matter, clients deserve replies, and I'd quite like to keep getting paid and keeping my team paid. I also suspect there are things I could check tomorrow without civilisation collapsing overnight. I would like to get better at telling which is which.
Because I can tell you how the email did. I'm much less certain what would convince me that I'd done enough for one day.
If nobody could send you a score for the next month, how would you decide whether you were living well?