The 30/90 Rule: A Calmer Way to Use Substack Data Without Losing Your Creative Spark

Learn a sustainable data rhythm that supports your storytelling, deepens audience trust and protects your creative energy.

Thanks to everyone who joined me last week to explore the Writing Seasons. If you haven’t signed up for our Writing Seasons live session, you can do that here for free.

Today, we’re turning our attention to an important (and often overlooked) part of the publishing experience: how to work spaciously and effectively with your Substack data.

To me, data, subscribers and storytelling are all connected by a deeper thread — the insights of movement, motivation and belonging. With the right tools and mindset, we can learn to listen to data in ways that support our creativity, not compromise it.

If that sounds like your kind of balance in publishing, come join thousands of others reading The Publishing Spectrum — where we explore thoughtful strategies for resonant, sustainable growth.

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Not All Data Is Meant to Be Checked Daily

When you publish on Substack — especially if you care deeply about resonance, not just reach — it can be tempting to monitor your dashboard constantly.

You want to feel the response. You want to know what’s working.

But that urgency rarely leads to creative clarity. And, speaking from experience, it usually leads to unproductive distraction. It pulls us away from the signals that really matter inside publishing.

So here’s what I practice — and what I encourage other creators to try:

Stop checking your metrics every day. Instead, check them every 30 days — and reflect every 90.

This rhythm — what I call the 30/90 Rule — gives you space to stay grounded in your creative instincts, while still leading with intention.

Let me share how I arrived at this practice, shaped by my experience as an entrepreneur and marketer.

What I Learned From Daily Metrics Monitoring — and Why I Want Something Different For Us on Substack

Before I launched this publication, I ran a small ecommerce business during the pandemic — a sensory shop that shipped calming products to healthcare workers and frontline responders.

It was a crash course in a new kind of pressure: ecommerce data.

In that world, you’re expected to watch — if not obsess over — metrics daily. At minimum, you need to know:

• What’s selling

• What’s stuck

• What competitors are pricing at

• How ad spend is converting, down to the SKU

At the time, I was less than a year out from an autism diagnosis — navigating sensory overload, emotional fatigue and isolation. The constant data monitoring felt unsustainable. It wasn’t creatively nourishing. It felt like sanctioned hypervigilance.

I loved the shop. But I knew I didn’t want to live inside data every day. I didn’t want my work to be dictated by false urgency, pricing battles, or performance loops.

Still, I knew data mattered. And I wanted to find a healthier way for it to live inside whatever I’d go on to build — including this publication on Substack, which I aim to keep thoughtful, effective and real.

Why Substack Needs a Different Rhythm

That experience of data overwhelm shaped many of the resources inside The Publishing Spectrum, like:

• What if data helps us ask the right questions?

• Substack audience data: insights from my Substack reader survey that will help create context for your launch or pivot.

• What the activity rating means on Substack.

I believe authors and creative entrepreneurs thrive when we embrace what I call disciplined spaciousness — where we allow data to guide and inform, but never control the creative process. Where we use it to listen, not to chase.

After years in marketing agencies (where weekly reports were the norm) and after running several of my own businesses, I can confidently say:

Sustainable strategy doesn’t come from constant monitoring. It comes from aligned reflection.

That’s what the 30/90 Rule offers — a steady, low-pressure rhythm for creators who are publishing independently, often without a team behind them.

Over time, I’ve refined what this looks like on Substack — where most of us are juggling creative vision, voice and real-world constraints.

This is also what inspired me to offer quarterly data audit resources to my paid subscribers, which you can learn about here.

Next, I’ll walk you through this simple framework — and the tools I’ve created to help you set it into motion.

The 30-Day View: Real-Time Pulse, Not Panic

Start by setting your dashboard to a 30-day range.

That’s your active insight window — the pulse of how your publication is currently landing.

You can read all the details in this piece I wrote here called “Let Data Breathe,” but the guiding principle here is that your Subscriber dashboard should prioritize giving you data on the 30-day view measurements that Substack offers.

You’re not tracking everything. You’re simply noticing what your subscribers are showing you through their actions. This helps creators of all sizes make small, meaningful observations — without disrupting creative flow or slipping into data-wonky, growth-hack mode.

The 90-Day View: Strategic Alignment, Not Constant Adjustment

The goal of the 30/90 Rule is to keep your energy focused on the real work that has to happen organically day after day: the storytelling, the subscriber care, the nudge cycles. That’s why I encourage everyone to consider doing a quarterly data audit.

This practice, of zooming out, is deceptively simple but very powerful in practice.

Every quarter, ask yourself:

• What themes have been resonating?

• What’s shifted in your own energy or voice?

• Does your churn rate matter now, or are you in a creative building year and churn is part of the iterative process?

• What is your audience responding to with more depth or trust?

The best creators I know don’t pivot on a whim — they engage their intuition alongside insights from data and patterns. (I love patterns!)

And those patterns don’t reveal themselves instantly — they emerge over time, through reflection.

How Do You Make Data a Creative Ally — Not a Creative Threat?

One of the most encouraging parts of publishing on Substack is seeing how many creative people are deeply committed to building trust with their audiences.

They fiercely protect their creative energy and listening tools — and at the same time, they’re open to learning how to work with data in thoughtful, intentional ways.

Together, we’re exploring what it means to approach data with a sense of disciplined spaciousness — so it can become a trusted ally in the creative process.