This 1 crushing time suck is destroying your success on Medium

Picture this: you’re tapping away on a Medium story you think is going to be a big hit.

Everything is going right, the words are just falling into place effortlessly.

You’re writing clean. You’re writing fast. You’re writing in flow state.

Then, all of a sudden, you feel the slightest twinge in the back of your head.

Maybe the twinge is prompted by a story that you thought would do well but isn’t and it’s bugging you.

Maybe it’s a story that’s doing really well and you want to ride the dopamine wave of seeing your numbers go up and up.

But the end result is the same: you stop writing and check your stats page.

Then maybe you refresh it. Then you refresh it again.

The siren call of the stats page. (Digital art credit: James J. Money/DallE2)

Productivity killer

Whatever the case, when you’re checking your stats, what you’re not doing is writing.

And, over the long run, that bad habit is destroying your potential success on Medium.

This is especially tough to avoid now, because changes to the Medium Partner Program have everyone excited and/or worried about what’s going to happen to their work.