George Miller
American cognitive psychologist whose 1956 paper "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" established working memory capacity as a central constraint on learning.
The Forgetting Curve in Workshops
The forgetting curve describes the rate at which newly presented information decays from memory when it isn't actively reinforced. In a typical lecture-style workshop, where information is delivered continuously without opportunities for…
April 28, 2026
The 80/20 Workshop Engagement Ratio
The 80/20 engagement ratio is a session-design principle stating that participants should be actively working with material for approximately 80% of a live session, while the workshop leader guides, clarifies, and coaches for the remaining 20%.
April 28, 2026
Warm vs. Cold Information
Warm information is material a participant already has some prior knowledge of and can recall when prompted. Cold information is material they have no prior exposure to — or exposure so thin that it can't be retrieved under the cognitive pressure of…
April 28, 2026
Cognitive Load
Cognitive load is the total amount of mental effort a participant's working memory is being asked to carry at any moment during a workshop. Working memory is the brain's real-time processing system, and it has a hard capacity ceiling.
April 28, 2026
How People Actually Learn
A workshop can end with glowing feedback and produce almost no behavior change a week later. That's not a motivation problem on the participant's side — it's a memory-science problem on the design side.
April 28, 2026