Do you know when you are learning something new and it makes zero sense? Right until something in your brain just magically clicks into place and you get the “aha!” moment? Suddenly it all starts to seem much more understandable. What happened is simple: you got past a learning bottleneck. It’s a stuck point that blocks progress. Often, that bottleneck is caused by a threshold concept: a key idea that has to be understood before the rest becomes understandable.
Where to start?
Learning is a process. To visualize, imagine a production line that makes pencils. One station drills the wood. The next inserts the graphite core. The last adds the metal ferrule and eraser.
If you were hired to improve the line, where would you start?
You’d start by looking for the bottleneck — the step that slows everything down. Because improving anything else won’t increase output. You either create more “work in progress” piling up before the bottleneck or end up having even more waiting time past the bottleneck.
Learning is a process and it works the same way.
Some just don’t get it
A year ago I was a part of a team tasked to teach 100+ very hands-on technical profiles to use a familiar system in a different way. The changes were small, but the consequences were big: follow the new process — or lose access.
We did everything “right”: announcement emails, demo sessions, mandatory e-learning, follow-ups, internal posts. Months later, we still had a long list of support tickets asking for help to access the system. “How is this possible?” – we asked ourselves.
We ran the numbers. Let’s say, 100 people received the training, 80 of them had no issues following the process and 20 people stumbled. These 20 are also the same people that during live demo sessions said they are aware and comfortable with the new process.
What happened to those 20 users? They did not experience the “aha!” moment at the right time. Meaning that everything past the point where they lacked knowledge did not make sense. Good news – if one can say so – we could easily identify the learning bottlenecks in the support requests. Though in most cases that would already be too late.
I have looked at research about what causes people with similar backgrounds to retain the same information at different rates. And then I saw it – some people hit a learning bottleneck and got stuck there.
Types of learning bottlenecks
There is a checklist for diagnosing why learners do not fully understand the point and are no longer able to complete the learning of the new topic. A key defining feature of a learning bottleneck is that once it is understood, it irreversibly reshapes the understanding of the topic. According to research, there are 4 categories of the bottlenecks, that each of us can experience in the process of learning something new:
- Missing or wrong basics
People get stuck because they don’t have a key building block yet, or they learned it wrong and need to “unlearn” it.
Example: Investing is hard if you don’t get compound interest, or you think stocks are just gambling. - Missing connections to related information
They know some facts, but not how they fit together, so the new idea feels messy.
Example: MFA feels annoying until you see how attackers use stolen passwords to log in. - Misaligned language
The language used in teaching is unclear, too technical, or used differently by different people.
Example: If “risk” and “threat” get mixed up, people perceive the content differently. - Intuition disagrees
Their “common sense” clashes with the new idea, so they resist it. This is often the most stubborn bottleneck because it feels right even when it’s wrong.
Example: Many think heavier objects fall faster, but in low air resistance they fall at the same rate. People tend to only believe it after they see it.
Remember the big picture
From my personal experience, a very powerful tool to help people become more open to learning a new concept is as simple as explaining why they need to know it, why it should matter to them. Leveling with the audience and answering the question can do miracles.
Design for the bottlenecks
Your learners will encounter learning bottlenecks. Once you know it, you don’t just share information, you plan for the moments where people might get stuck, and you build a way out.
My suggestion is to choose the key idea that must be understood, predict why it may be misunderstood (missing basics, missing links, unclear words, or a gut feeling that conflicts), and add a quick check plus a simple fix for each. Then, when learners stumble, you can immediately identify that and help them move forward right away instead of continuing and leaving people behind.
Process to overcome learning bottlenecks:
- Define the key point that must be understood. (What must learners understand for everything else to make sense?)
- Predict what can be misunderstood and why? (E.g. missing basics / pieces don’t connect / words are unclear / intuition disagrees).
- Prepare a short quiz at each of the potential learning bottlenecks. (1–3 question mini-quiz or a tiny task that proves understanding).
- Teach the fix right away. (e.g. give a short explanation + a simple example (and a non-example if needed).
- Quiz again: check if the bottleneck has been overcome. (e.g. ask one more question/task to confirm they got past the bottleneck. Ideally, give one fresh example to make sure they can use it outside the training scenario).
If you build these checks and fixes into your training, bottlenecks become easy to spot and simple to remove before learners fall behind. The result is fewer “I thought I understood” moments later.
Download the template
I have created a template for mapping and analysing the potentially misunderstood concepts (bottlenecks). You can download it here:
Let me know which botlenecks you hit most often!
Conclusion
I don’t think that people fail at learning because they are lazy or don’t care. It happens because learners hit a bottleneck and everything after that point becomes noise. If you treat bottlenecks as a normal part of learning, you can design around them. First, identify the one key idea that must be understood. Then predict how it might be misunderstood. Make sure to add a quick check, and have a simple fix ready. When you do that, you don’t just “deliver content”, you get more people across the line, on time, with fewer follow-up questions and far fewer support tickets.
References:
Goldratt, E. M., & Cox, J. (2004). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement (3rd rev. ed.). North River Press.
Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (2003). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. In C. Rust (Ed.), Improving student learning: Theory and practice—Ten years on (pp. 412–424). Oxford Brookes University
Pace, D., & Middendorf, J. (Eds.). (2004). Decoding the disciplines: Helping students learn disciplinary ways of thinking (New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 98). Wiley.
Middendorf, J., & Shopkow, L. (2018). Overcoming student learning bottlenecks: Decode the critical thinking of your discipline. Routledge.
The Open University. (n.d.). Problem distiller (OpenLearn: “Tricky topics and threshold concepts”)
Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12, 257–285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4
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