The other day I got distracted by this great post by Joe Burns about distraction because I’ve been finding myself distracted lately by the concept of distraction. And when I say distraction, I mean the organic kind of distraction, the natural inclination for the mind and the senses to magnetically wander towards something rather than the algorithmically manipulated kind of distraction that we’ve been praying at the feet of for far too long now.

I’ve made it an intention lately to allow myself to be distracted more often. Leave the phone when going for a walk with the dog. Look at the trees. Watch her sniffing the air. Notice the strange pile of junk in somebody’s front yard. Listen to the imaginative dialogue between two kids bouncing on a trampoline. Stare out the window on the train, or notice a book someone is reading, or the DIY glitter someone has taken the time to put on their Doc Martins. In the moment, I don’t know why I’m noticing any of these things, but I am, so why not pay attention. There’s probably a clue somewhere if we remove our blinkers.

Merriam-Webster defines ‘distraction’ as having one's thoughts or attention drawn away. I mean, we could just as easily make that the definition of the point of advertising, couldn’t we? To draw people’s thoughts and attention away? Yet there’s few dirtier words in the modern corporate world than something being a ‘distraction’.

The obsession with optimising and templating and forcing people and processes into imaginary things like ‘funnels’ and ‘journeys’ and arbitrary ‘scores’ has led to the demonisation of natural human curiosity. I’ve seen work go through research and score highly in earning people’s attention, which you’d think to be a great result, only to be followed by the fact that it was the creative or the humour or the scenario that drew the attention, and not the logo or pack shot, which is then regarded as a ‘problem to solve’. In short, the interesting bit is too interesting. It’s ‘too distracting’. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it make a sound, then at least nobody was distracted, I guess.

Instead of appreciating what people are naturally attracted to, we’ve opted instead to force a set of preconceived notions upon them, making the process of making an ad start to feel a bit like this.

As Joe points out in his piece, many of history’s greatest ideas were born of distraction.

“Penicillin emerged because Alexander Fleming was not paying attention to mold. The microwave exists because Percy Spencer was thinking about radar and accidentally melted a chocolate bar.”

If you’ve ever listened to an artist or musician speak about, or even watched their creative process, you’ll notice much the same. When System of a Down’s Serj Tankian couldn’t find the right lyrics, Rick Rubin threw a book on the ground and asked him to turn to a page and read the first line in order to have him wander down a different path. In the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night documentary, we see the members of the band improvising riffs and harmonies, throwing them into the ether until something catches someone’s attention and they run with it. Bob Ross used to famously turn a harsh stroke or a slip of the knife into a new feature of a painting, declaring that ‘we don’t make mistakes, just happy accidents’.

‘It’s too distracting’ is one of the most common pieces of negative feedback that creatives and agencies now receive. To anything. The idea, the talent, the facial expressions, the wardrobe, the propping, the jokes, there’s always something that is ‘too distracting’. Now, this is not to say that it could very well be something that’s in the way, but if we immediately discard it without considering why we’re attracted to it, we’ll never know. Making an ad that gets people’s attention, or distracts them, is no easy feat. If we find our attention naturally gravitating towards something, rather than it being forced there, then we really should be paying attention to it.

We like to talk about how we are living and competing in an ‘attention economy’. We are spending large sums of money to make things that must compete not only with each other, but with all forms of entertainment and media, and we’re losing by such a measure that people pay money to NOT see our work. Given that’s the case, I would think that being able to successfully ‘distract’ people as the potential beginnings of a blessing rather than a curse.

Straying from the path is how we’ve always discovered new ground. Let your mind wander. Let your people feel safe to explore. As Joe put it, stop treating digression and tangents and distraction as inconveniences rather than the fuel for brilliance that they are.

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