The Learning Blocker Paradox

It’s me 🙋‍♂️ …came to bother you, again. As always I have a question for you.

If have you ever attended hours long training program, then six months later realized you haven’t used a single thing you learned. If you ask me, I can’t even remember what I’ve eat six hours ago, forget about training after six months.

The problem? Training teaches us what to do but often fails to bridge the gap to actually doing it and at the end nothing changes. This is nothing, but The Learning Blocker Paradox. Classic, isn’t it.

Real-life Scenario (I’ll try to keep it shorter 😁 )

Meet Kelvin, a 10x smart developer (who can build google in a day 😉 , only Kubernetes scares him 😨 ) who recently attended a week-long workshop on Kubernetes. By the end of the week, he could spell “Kubectl” in his sleep and had dreams of auto-scaling pods. He felt unstoppable. But when his team started migrating their monolith to microservices two months later, Kelvin froze. The training didn’t cover his team’s quirky deployment pipeline nor did it touch on handling legacy systems or edge cases.

Sound familiar? Kelvin isn’t alone. This is the paradox in action: training programs impart knowledge but rarely provide the tools or confidence to apply that knowledge in messy, real-world situations.

The Typical Training Horror Story

1. Excited team attends workshop

2. Takes copious notes

3. Returns to work

4. Nothing changes

5. Repeat next quarter

Why Training Often Fails?

1. The Knowledge Illusion / Practice Gap

• Collecting information ≠ Gaining skill (check out my article The Collector’s Fallacy)

• Watching cooking videos doesn't make you a chef

2. Information Overload

• Ever fried your brain with 10 hours of Kubernetes, Terraform and CI/CD in a single day?

• Human retain knowledge best when it’s in bite-sized chunks

3. Generalized Knowledge, Specific Problems

• Most training sessions focus on broad concepts but don’t address your team’s unique challenges

• For example, Training on REST APIs teaches us CRUD operations but skips things like handling rate limits, authentication, RBAC, pagination, etc.

4. The Comfort Zone Conspiracy

• Our brain loves familiar territory

• Change requires more energy than Netflix and pizza, unfortunately ☹️ 

Breaking the Blocker

So how do we fix this paradox?

1. Contextualize Training

• Customize session focued on actual problem teams are facing

• Kubernetes workshop is great, but session on deploying Kubernetes with your CI/CD is priceless

2: Reinforce through real problem, not slide deck

• Don’t just go through slide deck of genelized content

• Mimic a problem, have trainee to solve it during workshop.

• e.g. Given a messy JIRA board, let full stack team to discuss, brainstorm and come up with approach.

3. Reward Application, Not Just Attendance

• Don’t count how many people completed training.

• Celebrate those who successfully applied the learning.

• E.g. If someone successfully applied Stead Thread concept in their Agile approach — share with other teams, throw a mini pizza party or give some swag.

4: The Accountability Hack

• It’s our responsibility as well to not lose learning after workshop

• Find a buddy, set visible goal, create public commitment

Closing Thoughts

Training programs aren’t inherently flawed, nor their purpose. But they often fail to create transformation they promise. The difference between teaching and transforming lies in the follow-through. Learning doesn’t end when the training session does; it begins when you face your first real challenge afterward.

The Learning Blocker Paradox isn’t just a frustration — it’s an opportunity to rethink how we grow as professionals. Let’s bring the change.

Until next time, Cheers !

I’d love to hear about your experiences with training workshops. Join the conversation on LinkedIn and 𝕏 

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Thanks for reading,
Kelvin
TechParadox.dev