The trap of tracking everything
More metrics feel like more control. If we're tracking fifty things, we must be on top of the business. In practice they dilute focus and make it harder to act. When everything is important, nothing is. When the dashboard has twenty tiles, nobody owns "what we do when this moves." The dashboard becomes wallpaper.
The trap is seductive. Each metric seems reasonable. Signups, retention, revenue, engagement, NPS, support tickets. Why wouldn't you want to see all of it? Because seeing it isn't the same as acting on it. The teams that get value from their numbers are the ones that watch a few and do something when they move. The teams that watch everything do nothing. They're too busy watching.
The fix isn't to stop tracking. It's to stop pretending that tracking equals focus. Pick a goal. Pick the few metrics that tell you if you're hitting it. Watch those. Ignore the rest for now. When the goal shifts, the metrics shift with it.
Goals vs. metrics
A goal is "increase acquisition via paid." The metrics are installs, signups, ad spend. One goal, a few numbers. Not a dashboard of fifty. The goal is the decision. The metrics are the signal that tells you if the decision is working.
Goals answer "what are we trying to do?" Metrics answer "how do we know if it's working?" If you can't draw a line from the metric to the goal, the metric is noise. If the metric moves and you don't know what to do next, it's not tied to a goal. The best metrics are the ones where "up is good" or "down is bad" is obvious because the goal is clear.
That's why we talk about focus. One goal at a time. The metrics that support it. When you're focused on acquisition, you watch acquisition metrics. When you shift to retention, you watch retention metrics. The dashboard doesn't have to show everything. It has to show what matters for the goal you're chasing right now.
How to run that in practice
Pick one focus. Surface only the metrics that matter for that focus. When the goal shifts, the metrics shift with it. Same weekly cadence. Same place the team looks. But the numbers on the screen change when the goal changes.
That means having a small set of metrics per focus. Not "all of acquisition" but "the two or three numbers that tell us if paid acquisition is working." Install volume, signup rate, cost per signup. Or whatever fits your business. The point is constraint. Fewer numbers, clearer signal.
It also means being willing to ignore things. When you're focused on acquisition, retention is still happening. You're just not watching it this cycle. That's uncomfortable. It's also the only way to get traction. You can't move five things at once. You can move one thing and then the next.
Why we built AppFit around focus
So you chase the goal, not the vanity of "we track everything." AppFit forces the constraint: one focus, a few metrics, a weekly summary, a product journal. We don't give you fifty tiles and hope you'll focus. We give you one focus and the numbers that support it. When you're ready to shift, you change the focus and the metrics update.
The product is built around the idea that goals come first. Metrics serve goals. When the goal is explicit, the metrics make sense. When the goal is "track everything," the metrics are just noise. We'd rather help you chase one goal well than watch twenty numbers poorly.
