I am drowning in data and cannot tell what matters from noise. Help?

When everything is measured, everything clamors for attention, and it all starts to look equally important. That is why you feel like you are drowning. The problem is not too little skill. It is too little filtering. Without a clear question to sort by, every number shouts, and you cannot hear which ones actually mean something. Signal only exists in relation to a question. Noise is just data that does not help you decide anything. So the way out is not more analysis, it is a sharper question. What decision are you actually trying to make? Once that is clear, most of the flood becomes irrelevant, and the few numbers that would change your choice rise to the top on their own. Before your next dive into the data, write down the one decision you need to inform and the two or three metrics that would actually move it. Look at those first, and give yourself permission to ignore the rest for now. You are not missing something by narrowing. You are finally letting the important few come forward from behind the noisy many.