Numbers you will never use

A woman in Suez sells crochet blankets through a page she runs from her phone. She checks the page dozens of times a day.

How many people saw yesterday's post. How many saved it. Where the viewers live. What time they were online. Which colour got more hearts. A comment from a stranger asking the price and then saying nothing.

All of it is data. Very little of it is information.

The difference is whether it changes what she does. If she learns that the deep green blankets sell three to one against the beige, she makes more green ones. That number earned its place. If she learns that slightly more people looked at her page at nine in the evening than at eight, and she posts whenever the baby is asleep anyway, she has learned nothing she can use. She has only spent the time.

And the time is not small. Turning a pile of numbers into something you can act on takes attention and thought, sometimes a conversation with someone who knows more. That effort is worth spending on the few questions that lead to a choice. Spent on the rest, it feels like work and functions like hiding. Refreshing a screen is easier than picking up the hook, and it lets you feel busy while the real job waits.

A better habit is to start from the choice rather than the screen. What is she actually deciding this week? Which colour to make next, whether to raise the price, whether to try a smaller size. Then look only at the numbers that touch those questions, and let the rest scroll past.

A figure you cannot act on is not knowledge. It is noise that happens to be precise.