Things that have distracted me today: a colleague phoned, emails pinged, a friend WhatsApped about fixing a time for tennis, there was a group chat on Teams about leaving drinks for someone, a neighbour had a delivery, another neighbour is doing noisy work in their garden, I fancied a coffee, I re-checked Liverpool’s remaining fixtures, I remembered to reserve a book from the library, I made a coffee, an old school friend messaged to check the name of our French teacher, I made some toast, the dog needed letting out for a wee, I needed a wee.

And it’s not even lunchtime.

The modern world is full of distractions. The above list does not include the scheduled work calls and tasks, the day-to-day admin and long-term planning that nags away at the working day. Working from home or in the office, it’s no different.

The point being: there is no such thing as a pristine moment to consume content. A moment where the audience will give it their full, undivided attention, carving out time from their busy schedule, close off all notifications, find a comfortable chair near plenty of natural light, clear their mind, and devote themselves to your story.

It’s a nonsense.

We must accept there is much we cannot control.

Of course, there are steps we can take to maximise the content consumption experience. Make it easy to grab the key message. Use a strong headline or opening quote. Highlight a striking metric. Don’t bury the good stuff.

You might also consider adjacent content. Vimeo CEO, Philip Moyer highlights the issue on Nilay Patel’s Decoder podcast. Creators of branded content are growing increasingly unhappy with YouTube’s algorithms placing non-complementary content alongside their work, he says. They’ve spent time and money on their content, they don’t want viewers distracted by videos that could contradict their message.

If you’re reading this on LinkedIn, no doubt there will be a weird range of ads, articles, likes and promotions. There’s not much you can do about that.

But you can tidy your own garden. If your content is hosted on your site, declutter the design, don’t use large blocks of copy, make smart choices around complementary content. If it’s video, make subtitles available. If it’s written, provide an audio option. If it’s audio, include the transcript. Include links to sources and further reading.

Above all, don’t be boring. Make your content the distraction.