I used to think you could never have too much logging. My mindset was simple: the more information available when something goes wrong, the easier it’ll be to debug later.

That assumption changed while I was working on the backend of a community platform I made not quite long, where users earn. One of the APIs I was responsible for handled a high volume of small, repetitive requests, and I had sprinkled detailed logs throughout almost every stage of the request lifecycle.

Nothing seemed wrong during development.

But once I started running load tests, the numbers told a different story. Response times were higher than expected, log files were growing surprisingly fast, and tracing actual issues became harder because there was simply too much noise. I realized I wasn’t logging useful events—I was logging almost everything.

I ended up removing a large portion of the debug logs, grouping related events into single log entries, and only keeping detailed logs around operations that actually mattered. The improvement wasn’t dramatic enough to solve every performance issue, but it was enough to reduce unnecessary overhead and make debugging much easier.

The experience reminded me that logging is just like any other part of an application: it needs intention. Too little makes troubleshooting difficult, but too much can quietly become part of the problem.

I’m curious, have you ever tracked down a performance issue that turned out to be caused by something you initially considered harmless?