Alison went to a lecture recently on fad diets. She showed me the slides, and they were pretty much what you expected. What was incredible is just how many fad diets are out there. It’s easy to get busy, lose track of your health, and not focus on eating the right foods. Plus, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there about what foods are good and what foods aren’t.

In thinking about our collective health, I realized that there’s a stark similarity between our own unhealthiness and the relative health of our websites. I’ve been working on my own websites for over a decade. There are redesigns that occur, but for the most part, improvements are added to my sites without much taken out.

This bloat, over time, gets in the way of user experience and can have a measurably negative impact on load times. The lecture of fad diets got me thinking that maybe my websites need to go on a diet.

I hate to do it, but from time to time, I’ll use a browser extension that will count the number of trackers on a website. When the number gets over 30, my desire to stay on a website dramatically decreases. There are analytics, ad networks, Facebook Pixel, and services from companies that I’ve never heard of, all watching my every move.

Zero. That’s the number of trackers that are now on my websites. To the extent that its within my control, I’m not going to add a single tracker to any of my sites. I want to keep my web presence healthy, and honestly, I think my content stands on its own. It’s important for me to write and publish regardless of the number of visitors or where they come from.

So when you visit any of my sites, be confident that you’re the only one who knows. Stay for a while or just a few moments, read my thoughts, develop a few of your own, and then move on. It’s a better, faster experience for you, and a healthier one for my site.