I’ve dived down a rabbit hole about cognitive load.. and I’m in here with neurons firing exploring ideas and concepts. I’ll move on soon, but for now there are a few more things I am pondering. So far my brain has gone in the direction of tool sprawl, the physical workplace, the sensory and environmental costs that quietly accumulate across a working day. But there’s another context I have on my mind, one that sits right at the intersection of my work and my interest in how people actually learn.
Workplace training. And specifically, how much mental energy we spend before a single slide has been advanced.
This is the first of two posts looking at cognitive load in workplace learning. This one is about live training, the kind where someone has organised a session, sent a calendar invite, and expects you to show up. The second topic on my mind is to look at self-paced online learning, and the particular kind of overhead that comes with being left to do it in your own time. I think both these areas of learning are connected and also underestimated.
Getting there is its own cognitive event
Something you may not consider is that before a word of content is delivered, participants showing up to a live in person or online training session have already done a lot of work.
If a training session is in person, attendees had to find the room or building, navigate an unfamiliar space, work out where to sit, figure out whether they need to bring anything, and manage whatever came before the session. It could have been a meeting that ran long, a commute, a morning of back-to-back decisions, or just stress of workload and things on their mind.
If the training is online, the attendee had to locate the link (hopefully in time), dial in, troubleshoot audio, decide whether to use headphones or speakers, manage notifications from every other tab open on their screen, and make a split-second call about whether to have their camera on. We don’t know what environment they are in to join a session. It could be in an open plan office, at home just at their dining table, or in a noisy cafe… of in their care between meetings or life commitments. Who knows!
None of these things feel significant in isolation, but they layer. And for people who find novelty, ambiguity, or rapid decision-making particularly costly (including many who are neurodivergent) that pre-session load can be genuinely depleting before any content has been shared. They may be low on spoons before the training even begins and then definitely not in an optimal state for learning. The onboarding experience into a learning event is part of the learning design. We just rarely treat it that way.
Then the session itself
Once people are in the room, physically or virtually, there are more layers to consider.
Structure and signposting
If participants don’t know what’s coming, how long each section will take, or how the parts connect to each other, they spend cognitive energy monitoring and anticipating rather than absorbing. A clear agenda at the start isn’t just a courtesy. It frees up working memory for the actual content.
The presenter
Delivery style matters more than we usually credit. A fast pace with few pauses, dense slides, unexplained jargon, or lots of verbal tangents all create processing demands. So does a delivery that’s flat or hard to follow. People who process information differently – whether due to ADHD, auditory processing differences, anxiety, or simply being unfamiliar with the subject – feel this more acutely. But honestly, everyone feels it. I know we’ve all been in a session we had to tolerate and were relieved when it was over.
The content itself
Volume is one thing, but structure is everything. Information that’s dumped rather than scaffolded asks learners to do the organising work themselves. If concepts build on each other without being explicitly linked, or too many new ideas arrive at once without consolidation, you lose people. And they often don’t know why. Often when we are overwhelmed we don’t know or label it straight away. We can feel discomfort yet not know why, and a training session can really trigger this.
A few things that actually help
These aren’t dramatic redesigns, they’re small shifts that remove unnecessary friction without touching the substance.
- Send the logistics clearly and early. Location, link, what to bring, what to expect. Not buried at the bottom of a calendar invite. Sent separately, plainly, with enough lead time for people to prepare.
- Start with the map. Tell people where you’re going before you go there. An agenda, a rough timing breakdown, a brief overview of what the session covers and why it matters. This gives people a frame to hang new information on. Make people aware of the journey you are taking them on, with anchor points to help their experience.
- Build in pauses. Not just for questions, but for processing. Silence is not wasted time. It’s often where the learning actually happens. A moment to process can help understanding and then even reflection and questions that really drive value in a session.
- Offer materials before or after. For people who process better by reading, or who need to revisit content to consolidate it, a pre-read or follow-up resource can make a significant difference to what sticks. Walking into a session at zero can be hard to get up to speed, absorb and connect with the content. An idea of things prior helps people arrive ready to engage.
- Simplify the slides. Dense text, multiple graphics, and narration all competing for attention at once is genuinely hard to process. If a slide needs explaining, simplify the slide. And ensure they are accessible especially so screen readers can provide the right experience with all the components on a slide.
- Normalise asking for what you need. Whether that’s captions, a seat near the front, or a quieter space to dial in from – creating an environment where people feel comfortable naming their preferences reduces the background effort of masking or managing. Giving space for people to express needs and them be valued helps build psychological safety which is always important to a strong experience.
Why this matters beyond inclusion
I want to be clear that cognitive load in live training isn’t just a neurodiversity consideration, even though that lens often helps us see it most clearly. As I noted in my earlier post on the physical workplace, these things affect anyone. Anyone who is tired, stressed, unfamiliar with the topic, sitting in a noisy room, attending back-to-back sessions, or joining from a different time zone. I have always found, but took a long time to fully realise, that my autistic desire for structure, framing, logic, or a clear journey were something other people valued. In previous roles people would say “get Megan to create a high level plan so we can see how it all fits together”. This was to the benefit of everyone, not just a neurodivergent need.
Good training design isn’t about lowering the bar. It’s about removing the obstacles that have nothing to do with the learning – so people can actually reach it. When we reduce the load that doesn’t serve the learning, we create more room for the load that does. And having people experience the value of that to move towards ‘aha moments’ and greater connection and even joy in learning.. well that excites me!
Part of an ongoing series on cognitive load in the modern workplace. Read the earlier posts on tool sprawl and the physical environment. The companion post to this one looks at self-paced online learning.