Quit Yankin the Joystick

Author

Jon Matzner
January 18, 2026

Your sales dropped 15% last month.

Everyone panics.

Meetings get called.

Fingers get pointed.

Hours get burned investigating.

Then next month?

….Back to normal. Nothing was wrong.

You just wasted a WEEK chasing a ghost.

Here's the thing most business owners never learn: your numbers wiggle.

All of them.

Always…. and it's not a bug , it's how REAL BUSINESSES work.

The question isn't "did the number change?" The question is "did something actually change?"

There's a world of difference between those statements.

The map is not the terrain.

Most dashboards are useless because they show you movement without meaning.

Up 8%! Down 12%! You have no idea if that's signal or noise.

So you either panic at everything or ignore everything. Neither works.

You JERK THE JOYSTICK.

SALES ARE DOWN!

SALES ARE UP!

ahhhhhhhhhhh.

There's an old manufacturing trick called an XmR chart, that solves this.

If the acronym intimidates you, call it a “Should I Actually Give a F Chart”.

Sounds technical. It's not. It just draws lines around your normal “wiggle” range based on your own history.

Point goes outside the lines?

Something real happened.

Go look.

Point stays inside?

That's just Tuesday. Move on.

Three rules:

  • Point outside the lines (think ‘normal range) = real

  • Three out of four points clustering near a a line (ehhh keep an eye on it) = probably real

  • Points up or down but within the normal range = ignore

That's it. A high schooler could do this by hand.

The magic is what happens to your brain after using it for a few months.

You stop reacting to every dip.

You stop celebrating every spike. You start seeing your business differently …. as a system with inputs you can actually control and outputs that respond (or don't).

And you FINALLY have a way to know if that “Discount Strategy” or whatever actually moved a number.

Most of what you think matters doesn't move the needle at all.

The chart shows you that, repeatedly, until you believe it.

Then you find the few things that do matter. And YOU DO MORE OF THOSE.

That's it.

That's being "data-driven." Not more dashboards. Not fancier analytics. Just knowing the difference between SIGNAL and NOISE.

This gives you a way to know the difference.

This was inspired by a wonderful post from Common Cog, and an exchange on Twitter with the author Cedric.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon