Graph of log count only and avoid search result system load because there are soooo many events to return.

I have a few searches I want to dashboard that display log events over a week, then another graph for events over a month. The problem is that there are millions of events weekly and am curious if there is an optimized way I can display log counts w/o a huge search that will take too long. So really to query the number of items, but not return event specific detail/results. Thanks!