You've just read something that has left you slack-jawed.

It might have been a news story that transformed your understanding of a political issue; it might have been a long-form feature that completely flipped your perspective on a conflict; it might have been an interview that made you suspect that your favourite musician is actually a bit of a dick.

And then you try to explain it to somebody else. As you talk, you struggle to recall the salient statistics, convincing lines of argument, or even the names of people and places relevant to the topic at hand. What sounded so convincing on the page is sapped of any persuasive power, like a barrister bleeding out during closing arguments.

Back when I worked as part of a creative agency, there was one question that clients would ask more than any other. It was an oddly specific social media query that cropped up over and over again.

Our clients wanted to know: what's the best time of day to publish a social media post?

For some reason, each of them was separately convinced that there must be a perfectly optimum time to post to each social media platform. They weren't looking for a broad span of time - the late afternoon, say, or from 9-10am PST. No, they believed there had to be a moment each day that represented the peak of potential engagement.

There's one debate that I’ve found myself having pretty often when managing teams of writers.

It would typically begin when I asked a writer to simplify something they'd written - to strip out jargon, to spell out an abbreviation, or add an explanatory sentence somewhere.

“Everybody knows that term”, the writer might say, “and that abbreviation is actually really common”. They might argue that the publication’s audience doesn’t need any extra explanation - the readership has been following this developing story for weeks.