You may have noticed that mental health for creative people is well… not going so well. Now, most of this has to do with corporations squeezing every dollar from the creators themselves, apps that give horrendous incentives for behavior, and well, a ton of things that you are probably bored with reading about. But there’s one practice I see that constantly inflicts psychic damage on creatives that is totally avoidable.

Last week on my podcast My .4 Cents, Andrew Southworth, Matt Bacon and I all got into a philosophy I found helped my mental health and drastically improved many of the creators I work with marketing (the video is above if you want to dig in). The philosophy goes something like this…

There's a term called "infohazard"—information that's likely to harm you when you receive it. (It's also the title of a song on my current favorite record, Ninajirachi's I Love My Computer.) This perfectly describes what I see when creatives use analytics to judge their self-worth.

Analytics exist to help you optimize your strategy, not to measure your value as a creator. But I know the psychological damage of constantly checking numbers all too well—I used to do it obsessively. I'd post a video, then immediately open the app and set a mental threshold: hit that number and I'd feel good about myself; miss it and I'd get bummed out.

Here's what I learned: this addiction usually destroys your mental health. We're wired to feel losses more intensely than wins, which creates a rigged system. Think of it like a points game where meeting expectations gets you zero points, falling short costs you 5 points, but exceeding expectations by 100% only gives you 2 points. You're set up to fail.

I am lucky that my wife, Lauren Geiser, is actually a therapist for creative people (mostly musicians experiencing blocks) in her private practice. She had this to say:

So the first logical thought is to NOT look at analytics. I personally only look once a week on Friday night, since if things are bad, I will soon be doing something I will enjoy and get distracted (or I can eat my feelings at Mission Chinese). But ignoring numbers doesn’t make them better; being in a good mindset and a plan is what makes them better.

Here's the key principle I've emphasized in my videos and newsletter: most artists who go viral have been consistently making similar content while gradually improving it. They use analytics as a roadmap for those improvements, not a report card or a referendum on their worth. They only look at numbers where there’s a clear direction of what they should try next.

Enjoying this? Forward it to a music friend you’d like to be closer to and start a discussion!

For example, say you check Instagram and see your latest video has a terrible Average View Duration. If you have a plan, you know what to try next: move more, shorten the song, add more cuts, or split the video in half. But if you just look at those numbers to beat yourself up, you learn nothing and become less motivated to improve.

This is why checking analytics without an action plan only causes psychological damage. You're essentially volunteering for discouragement. However, when you see poor AVD and think "I should add more movement and quicker cuts," you now have concrete steps to improve your next video, potentially.

If you want to dive deeper into this concept, I've written two newsletters explaining what all the analytics numbers mean and specific actions you can take to improve them. You can read those newsletters here and here.