It’s survey time again.

Every year, Jane Hart asks people around the world to share the tools they use to learn. I always enjoy seeing the results. The tools change, but what interests me most is how people fit them together.

Here is my list for 2026.

These are not the newest or flashiest tools. They are the ones that keep earning a place in my workflow. They help me discover ideas, organize what I find, think more clearly, create useful things, collaborate with other people, and share the finished work.

Looking at the list, I realized I had not chosen ten isolated apps. I had chosen a system:

Discover. Organize. Think. Create. Collaborate. Share.

The tools are not ranked. Asking whether Feedly is better than PowerPoint is like asking whether a hammer is better than a refrigerator. The answer depends on what you are trying to do.

One more thing: none of these tools replaces sound judgment or a strong idea. I will spare you that disclaimer ten more times.

Here are my top learning tools for 2026.

1. Feedly

Feedly helps me build my own information stream instead of letting an algorithm build it for me.

I follow sources across learning, design, technology, marketing, behavioral science, cybersecurity, and several other rabbit holes. Feedly brings them into one place where I can scan broadly without spending all day bouncing between sites.

I am not trying to read everything. That way lies madness and several thousand unread articles.

I am looking for patterns and unexpected connections. A marketing article might spark a better plan for promoting a learning program. Research on attention might change the opening of a workshop. A visual-design example might offer a clearer way to explain a complex idea.

Some of my best L&D ideas start outside L&D. Feedly makes those useful collisions more likely.

2. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot

Yes, I am grouping the major AI assistants together. No, that is not cheating.

There is no single “best” AI assistant for every job. Their strengths keep changing, so I choose based on the task, where the source material lives, how much context is needed, and what I plan to do with the result.

I might use one to challenge a workshop outline, generate alternatives for a headline, turn a transcript into reusable content, or find gaps in an early draft. Copilot is especially useful when my work already lives inside Microsoft 365.

I think of these tools as thought partners, not answer machines.

They are most helpful when I bring them a real problem, useful context, and clear standards. A vague prompt can still produce polished prose, but polished is not the same as useful.

AI helps me reach a stronger first draft faster. The expertise, judgment, and final decisions are still mine.

3. NotebookLM

General AI assistants help me think beyond the source material. NotebookLM helps me stay grounded inside it.

That makes it especially valuable when I am working with a defined collection of articles, notes, transcripts, slides, or research. I can explore themes across those sources, identify gaps, generate a first pass at questions, or examine how the material might be organized.

One of my favorite uses is preparing for workshops and live events. I can load the relevant materials, generate possible questions, and then refine the best ones for a poll or discussion.

It is also useful during presentation planning. I do not need NotebookLM to design the final slides. I need it to help stress-test the story before I spend hours building them.

Is the sequence clear? Am I burying the useful part? What have I overlooked?

NotebookLM earns its place by helping me answer those questions while staying connected to the original sources.

4. Canva

Canva is my graphics superpower.

I use it for social posts, workshop assets, banners, promotional graphics, handouts, and the dozens of smaller pieces that surround a learning experience.

Those pieces matter. A course or workshop does not exist in isolation. People encounter an invitation, a title, a reminder, a community post, or a follow-up resource before and after the event itself.

Together, those touchpoints shape how the experience feels.

Canva helps me create that supporting material quickly and keep it visually consistent. It is especially useful when a good idea needs to become several related assets instead of one lonely graphic.

My favorite rule still applies: bad thinking with nicer graphics is still bad thinking.

When the idea is solid, though, Canva helps it look clear, connected, and worth someone’s attention.

5. Raindrop.io

I have lost enough good articles inside folders called “Read Later” to know that saving and curating are not the same thing.

Raindrop.io is where I organize articles, research, examples, visual inspiration, tools, and resources I may want for a newsletter, workshop, class, or presentation.

Its real value appears later.

When I need an example of a strong course title, research on attention, or a visual that explains an idea well, I can find it without reconstructing six months of browsing history.

That ability to retrieve matters more than the size of the collection.

A giant pile of bookmarks is not a personal knowledge system. It is a digital attic. Raindrop gives the collection enough structure to make it useful when a real project arrives.

6. Kit

Kit is the engine behind my Friday Finds newsletter.

It handles the machinery around subscriptions, publishing, and email delivery so I can focus on finding useful ideas and writing something readers can use.

The platform also reinforces a lesson L&D should borrow from marketing: creating good content is not enough. People still need to notice it, understand why it matters, and know what to do next.

That applies to newsletters, courses, workshops, job aids, and nearly everything else we make.

Kit helps me think beyond a single issue. It supports an ongoing relationship with readers. What do they find useful? What earns a click? What makes them come back next Friday?

Distribution is not an administrative step added after the “real” work. It is part of helping the work reach people.

7. PowerPoint

Yes, PowerPoint is still on the list. And no, I am not apologizing for it.

PowerPoint remains one of the most flexible creative tools available to learning professionals. I use it for presentations, visual explanations, workshop activities, prototypes, storyboards, job aids, and documents designed to be read rather than projected.

The blank slide can be a stage, a canvas, or a lightweight design environment. It gives me the control to turn an abstract idea into something people can see and understand.

AI slide tools have improved. They can help with outlines, initial structures, and the uncomfortable period before anything exists. But when the final product needs to be editable, precise, accessible, and genuinely mine, I still return to PowerPoint.

Old tools are sometimes still around because they work.

8. Craft

A presentation is built for the moment. A good handout is built for what happens next.

I use Craft to create digital notes and resources for workshops, classes, and presentations. These pages bring together the key ideas, links, examples, references, and next steps in a format people can use after the session ends.

That is important because slides and handouts perform different jobs.

Slides help me guide attention and tell the story in the room. They may rely on narration, timing, and context that disappear once the session is over. A handout needs to stand on its own.

Craft gives me a clean way to build that second experience. Participants do not receive a slide deck stripped of its presenter. They receive a useful resource designed for review and action.

The workshop may end at 3:00. The learning should not.

9. WordPress

WordPress powers my home base online and the website for my book “Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro”.

Social platforms are useful, but they are rented space. Algorithms change. Formats change. Reach changes. A website gives me a place I control for articles, workshop resources, downloads, and the growing collection of ideas I have shared over the years.

It also connects the different parts of my work: speaking, workshops, Friday Finds, my book, and the broader intersection of learning, design, and technology.

A social post may disappear from view in a few days. A useful article on my site remains searchable and available when someone needs it months or years later.

WordPress is not always elegant behind the scenes. There is usually a plug-in asking for attention or a setting hidden inside an elaborate scavenger hunt.

Still, it gives me flexibility, ownership, and a durable home for my work. That keeps it on the list.

10. Google Workspace + Microsoft 365

Not every valuable tool needs to be exciting.

Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, along with OneDrive, Word, Excel, Teams, and the rest of Microsoft 365, are where much of my everyday work gets done.

Workshop outlines take shape there. Drafts collect comments. Campaign assets get tracked. Project plans become more concrete. Collaborators add ideas, flag problems, and occasionally create four competing rewrites of the same sentence.

These tools provide the shared workbench for a project.

The choice between the Google and Microsoft ecosystems usually comes down to where the work already lives, what the organization supports, and what collaborators can access. I use both because real projects rarely respect software loyalties.

Most importantly, they save us from emailing files named something like Final_v6_REALLY_FINAL_UseThisOne.docx.

Yes, PowerPoint technically appears twice. Microsoft 365 is here for everyday work and collaboration. PowerPoint gets its own spot because, for me, it is also a distinct creative tool.

Honorable Mention: Zapier

Zapier helps with the repetitive work between tools. If information needs to move from one place to another, a routine action needs to trigger, or I am repeating the same mechanical task, automation may be able to give me some time back.

I do not want to automate everything. I want to automate the copying, pasting, transferring, and reminding that keeps me from doing more valuable work.

A bad process running faster is still a bad process. A useful process that no longer needs babysitting is a win.

The Real Tool Is the Workflow

The most useful part of this list is not any one app. It is how the pieces fit together.

Feedly helps me discover ideas. Raindrop helps me keep and retrieve them. NotebookLM and the AI assistants help me explore, test, and develop them.

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 provide the shared space where ideas become projects. PowerPoint and Canva help make those ideas visible. Craft turns the live experience into a resource people can revisit.

WordPress and Kit help the finished work reach an audience.

That is the bigger lesson for L&D.

A pile of apps is not a learning ecosystem. A connected workflow is.

Start with the problem. Decide what good looks like. Then choose the smallest set of tools that can help you get there.

No tool can rescue a weak idea. The right tool can help a strong one travel much farther.

Which tools would you genuinely miss if they disappeared tomorrow? Those are probably your real top learning tools.

I recently presented at the iSpring 2026 online conference. The session was called The Art & Science of eLearning, and the core idea was pretty simple:

Anyone can do eLearning.
Not just anyone can do it well.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we covered.

Anyone Can Build It. That’s the Problem.

The tools have never been more accessible. But accessible isn’t the same as effective. Good eLearning sits at the intersection of a lot of disciplines — instructional design, neuroscience, graphic design, storytelling, and marketing. When you hand powerful tools to people without the right foundation, the results are usually… not great.

Key 1: The Right Thing

Before you build anything, ask yourself: is this actually a training problem?

Most of the time, it isn’t. Look at the real performance factors, and you’ll usually find the culprits are unclear expectations, missing tools, bad incentives, or broken processes. Carl Binder’s Six Boxes Model makes this visual. Only one box points directly to training: skills and knowledge.

Ron Zemke had a great line about this — management demanding a course right now isn’t a valid excuse for lousy training. Push back. Do the analysis. Mager and Pipe’s Analyzing Performance Problems is still one of the best tools for this work, and it holds up.

Key 2: The Right Way

This is where most eLearning falls apart. The most common mistake? Too much information, not enough time to actually process it. Dr. John Medina called it force feeding with very little digestion in Brain Rules.

The problem is working memory. It’s a tiny bottleneck between what your learner sees and what actually sticks. Cram too much through that bottleneck and you’ve lost them.

A few principles that help: reduce cognitive load, lead with curiosity before content, and remember — telling ain’t training. If your course is just a series of narrated bullet points on a screen, it’s a document. Not learning.

Key 3: The Right Visuals

This one gets underestimated. Design isn’t decoration — it’s function. Research shows 94% of first impressions are tied to visual design. And those first impressions impact the perception of your course’s credibility, trust and even usability. Also, pictures beat text for recall..

You don’t need to be a designer. You do need to understand a few principles: coherence, redundancy, and modality. Connie Malamed’s Visual Design Solutions is a great place to start.

Where It All Comes Together

The session closed with a three-circle Venn diagram. Right Stuff. Right Way. Right Visuals. Where all three overlap? That’s where the amazing eLearning lives.

Most courses nail one or two. Getting all three is the goal — and it’s absolutely doable.

Grab the Slides and Resources

I built a landing page with the downloadable slides and links to every book and resource mentioned in the session.

Check it out here: art-science-elearning.lovable.app

Before you read another word:

During a typical 20-minute video lecture, what percentage of learners are actively mind-wandering at any given moment?

Take a guess.

Research consistently finds that a third to more than half of learners are mind-wandering during a video lecture — and the rate climbs as the session goes on.

You’ll remember that number better because you tried to retrieve it first.

That tension you felt? That tiny flicker of uncertainty?

That’s the mechanism.

And if your courses don’t create that feeling on purpose, you’re designing for comfort — not retention.

The uncomfortable truth for L&D

Most training starts like this:

• Objectives.
• Agenda.
• Definitions.
• “Here’s what you need to know.”

Translation: cognitive sedative.

If your course begins with a content dump, you’re actively suppressing attention. If your SME says, “They need the information first,” that’s not rigor. That’s risk avoidance.

Brains don’t wake up for information.

They wake up for problems.

The Pretesting Effect (and why failure works)

Here’s the counterintuitive finding:

Students who attempt to answer questions before studying consistently outperform students who spend that same time just reading.

Not students who guess correctly.

Students who guess wrong.

In a landmark 2009 study, Richland, Kornell, and Kao had participants answer questions about a passage before reading it. Most got nearly everything wrong. After reading, the pretest group dramatically outperformed the group that had simply studied longer — even when researchers analyzed only the questions participants got wrong on the pretest.

Let that sink in.

Protecting learners from wrong answers might be exactly backwards.

Quick prediction

Why do you think guessing wrong helps?

A) It increases effort
B) It activates prior knowledge
C) It boosts confidence
D) It reduces anxiety

Here’s what’s actually happening.

What’s happening in the brain

When someone guesses incorrectly, three things fire before they ever see the right answer.

1. Activation.
The wrong guess lights up related concepts already stored in memory. Those become hooks. When the correct answer arrives, it has something to attach to.

2. Prediction error.
The mismatch between guess and reality registers as “this matters.” The brain treats it as a learning signal stronger than passively reading a fact.

3. Attention stabilization.
Pan, Sana, Schmitt, and Bjork (2020) measured attention during online lectures. Learners who took pretests beforehand wandered significantly less. They weren’t passively watching. They were hunting.

The wrong answer primes the brain.
The right answer completes the circuit.

And here’s the business implication

Mind-wandering isn’t just a learning problem.

It’s a performance cost.

If half your workforce is zoning out during compliance, onboarding, or product training:

• Ramp-up slows.
• Errors rise.
• Rework increases.
• Stakeholder trust erodes.

Attention is the most expensive resource in your organization.

And most training spends it carelessly.

Two design myths to retire immediately

Myth 1: Learners are blank slates.
They’re not. They arrive with fragments, assumptions, half-formed models. Pretesting activates them.

Myth 2: Wrong answers waste time.
They don’t. They create the conditions for durable learning.

Let me push this further:

If your opening slide is a learning objective instead of a question most learners will miss, you’ve already lost the brain.

Try this before your next module goes live

Pick the single most important concept in your course — the one that actually drives behavior change.

Now ask yourself:

If they had to answer a question about this right now, would most of them get it wrong?

If the answer is “no,” your content probably isn’t specific enough to matter.

Write one question most learners won’t answer correctly.

Not a trick.
Not unfair.
Just specific enough to require a real attempt.

Put it:

• In the intro email
• On the first slide
• At the top of the pre-work
• Anywhere learners first encounter the experience

Tell them there’s no penalty.

Then deliver a clear, satisfying answer.

One rule: don’t skip the reveal.

The question opens the loop.
The content must close it.

Want to amplify it?

Use tools like Mentimeter or a simple Google Form to collect guesses and display the group distribution before revealing the answer.

Now you’ve layered in social curiosity:

• “Was I the only one who thought that?”
• “Why did most people choose B?”

That tension compounds attention.

Final challenge

Before you scroll, answer this:

In your last course, did learners encounter a meaningful question they were likely to miss before they saw the content?

If not, you’re choosing clarity over impact.

And impact is what your stakeholders actually pay for.

Want to go deeper?

The foundational study
Richland, Kornell, and Kao (2009). The research that launched modern pretesting work. Start here if you need to persuade a skeptic.

→ Read the original pretesting research

Plain-English science
Faria Sana breaks down the mind-wandering findings without jargon.

→ Read the researcher’s explainer

Pretesting vs. retrieval practice
A practical comparison of when to place questions before vs. after study.

→ Read the practical comparison

A practical crash course in performance-first thinking

It’s Tuesday at 2:47 PM when the Slack message arrives.

“We need a two-hour eLearning course on communication skills. By Friday.”

If you’re in L&D or instructional design, you probably fire back: What content should it include? Video or scenarios? Self-paced or instructor-led?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: those questions, though they feel responsible, are the wrong starting point.

By asking them, you’re not diagnosing a problem. You’re taking an order.

I spent the first few years of my career as an order taker. Built beautiful courses. Stakeholders loved them—at first. Then nothing happened. The training became shelfware. And I couldn’t figure out why.

The answer had been sitting in performance improvement research for decades. Thomas Gilbert, Robert Mager, Peter Pipe, Roger Kaufman, Geary Rummler—these researchers documented a simple, counterintuitive insight:

Training is almost never the problem. So it’s rarely the solution.

What follows are the frameworks that help you figure out when training will actually work—and when it won’t.

The Big Idea: Performance Over Courses

Training is not the goal. Performance is.

That sounds obvious. But the implications are radical: if performance is the goal, then training is just one intervention among many—and usually not the most powerful one.

The Human Performance Technology (HPT) movement emerged from a frustrating pattern: organizations kept throwing training at problems, and the problems kept not getting solved.

What researchers found changed how I think about my entire job.

Part 1:
Start With Results, Not Courses (Roger Kaufman)

Needs vs. Wants

Roger Kaufman had a gift for dismantling comfortable language.

In organizations, we say: “We need a leadership workshop.” “We need communication training.” “We need a new LMS.”

Kaufman would stop you. Those aren’t needs, he’d say. They’re wants—preferred solutions dressed up as problems.

Here’s the distinction:

A Want: A specific solution (training, tools, systems)
A Need: A measurable gap between current results and desired results

When a stakeholder requests a course, they’re handing you a solution before anyone has defined the gap. Your job is to backtrack and find the actual result that’s missing.

The Outside-In Mindset

Kaufman’s Organizational Elements Model gives you a map for thinking backward from outcomes:

Mega: What value are we delivering to customers or society?
Macro: What must the organization produce to deliver that value?
Micro: What do people need to do daily to make that happen?

Most training starts at Micro—”employees need to learn X”—without confirming X actually drives results.

Here’s an example: A client asked for “better presentation skills training” for account managers. When I pushed to Macro level, the real organizational result they wanted was shorter sales cycles. When we dug into the data, presentations weren’t the problem. The proposal approval process was taking 18 days on average.

Takeaway: Never start with the course. Start with the measurable result the organization is missing.

Part 2: Check the Environment First (Thomas Gilbert)

You’ve identified a real performance gap. Now comes the next trap: assuming the gap exists because people don’t know how to do something.

Thomas Gilbert spent years studying human performance and landed on a blunt conclusion:

Most performance problems are caused by the environment, not the individual.

He’d measured it. Environmental factors drive performance roughly 75% of the time. Knowledge and skill? About 25%.

The Behavior Engineering Model

Gilbert organized this into six factors:

The Environment (fix these first):

1. Data – Do people know what’s expected? Do they get clear, fast feedback?
2. Instruments – Do they have the tools, systems, time, and resources to do the job?
3. Incentives – Are we rewarding the right behaviors? Or accidentally punishing them?

The Individual (address these last):

4. Knowledge – Do they know how to do the task?
5. Capacity – Are they physically and mentally capable?
6. Motives – Do they personally value the outcome?

Training primarily targets Box 4: Knowledge.

If Boxes 1, 2, or 3 are broken, training makes people better informed and still stuck.

Carl Binder adapted Gilbert’s original model to make it usable in real workplaces. The six boxes translate performance theory into a fast, practical diagnostic—so teams can spot the real constraint without becoming performance experts.
Learn more at sixboxes.com

What This Looks Like

A sales team was consistently missing quota. Leadership wanted “advanced negotiation training.”

But when we mapped the situation to Gilbert’s model, the problem was in Box 2—Instruments.

The CRM required 47 clicks to generate a customer proposal. By the time a salesperson assembled the pricing data, prospects had often moved on or gone around them to customer support.

We didn’t build a negotiation course. We fixed the CRM workflow and reduced proposal generation to eight clicks.

Quota problems disappeared within a quarter.

Takeaway: You can’t train your way out of unclear expectations, broken tools, bad incentives, or sabotaged workflows.

Part 3: Decide If It’s “Can’t Do” or “Won’t Do” (Mager & Pipe)

You’ve checked the environment. The tools work. Expectations are clear. Incentives align.

But the performance gap persists.

Robert Mager and Peter Pipe gave us something rare: a practical diagnostic tool you can use in real time. A flowchart. (I think it is the best flowchart of all time!)

I keep a copy on my desk. It’s saved me from building useless training more times than I can count.

The Mager & Pipe Performance Flowchart

The genius of this flowchart is how it systematically walks you through a performance problem, ruling out non-training solutions one by one. Training only appears at the very end.

Here’s how it works:

Q1: Is the gap worth fixing? If the cost of fixing exceeds the cost of ignoring it, stop.

Q2: Could they do it if their life depended on it? (The “Gun Test”)

• If YES → It’s a “won’t do” problem. Check consequences and obstacles.
• If NO → It’s a “can’t do” problem. Continue below.

Q3: Are consequences aligned? Is doing it right rewarding? Is doing it wrong punishing? Or is it backwards?

Q4: Are there obstacles? Policies that contradict performance? Workflows that make the right thing harder? Remove obstacles first.

Q5: Did they ever do it correctly? If yes, they need practice or feedback—not necessarily training.

Q6: Can the task be simplified? Job aids, checklists, or workflow redesign often beat training.

Q7: Do they have the potential to learn it? Now training makes sense—with practice and feedback built in.

The Flowchart That Saved $200,000

A logistics company asked for “forklift safety recertification” for 400 warehouse workers. Budget: $200K. Reason: rising accident rates.

Here’s what walking the safety director through the flowchartmight look like.

Q1: Worth fixing? “Yes—insurance and damaged inventory are costing us more than training would.”

Q2: Could they do it safely if their life depended on it?

Long pause. “Actually… yes. When OSHA inspectors are on site, accidents drop to zero.”

Boom. That’s “won’t do,” not “can’t do.”

Q3: Consequences aligned?

Not even close. Productivity bonuses rewarded speed. Safe operation was slower—and therefore financially punished. Accidents had no real consequences.

Q4: Obstacles?

Several: tight warehouse corners, poor lighting, overdue forklift maintenance.

They didn’t build training.

Instead they:

• Fixed incentives (tied bonuses to productivity and safety)
• Improved lighting and warehouse layout
• Provided visible daily safety scoreboards

Cost: $35,000.
Results: 60% drop in accidents within three months.
Training budget: $0.

How to Use This

Get the flowchart from Mager and Pipe’s Analyzing Performance Problems (Chapter 2) or search “Mager Pipe performance flowchart” online. Print it. Keep it visible.

Next time someone requests training, walk through it together. Takes a little bit of time but saves months of wasted effort.

The flowchart turns “I think we need training” into an objective diagnostic. And here’s what you’ll discover: training is the solution to exactly one branch of that tree.

Takeaway: Training fixes “can’t do.” Management, systems, incentives, and workflow design fix “won’t do.” The flowchart tells you which one you’re dealing with.

Part 4: Fix the Workflow, Not Just the Worker (Geary Rummler)

Even with skilled people and clear goals, performance can still crater. Why?

Geary Rummler pointed out what most organizations miss: the structure fights the work.

Mind the White Space

Organizations are designed vertically—departments, functions, reporting lines. But work happens horizontally, across handoffs.

Marketing hands off to Sales. Sales hands off to Operations. Operations waits on IT. Everyone waits on approvals.

The gaps between these handoffs are what Rummler called the “white space” on the org chart. And they’re where work goes to die.

You can have brilliant performers, but if the process they’re trapped inside is broken, performance will suffer.

A Quick Example

An onboarding team was consistently missing deadlines. HR wanted “time management training.”

But when they mapped the workflow:

• HR completed paperwork (3 days)
• IT provisioned accounts (7 days)
• Facilities ordered equipment (5 days)
• The new hire’s manager was never told when to expect them

Total: 15+ days. Time management training wouldn’t have saved a single day—the problem wasn’t individual time management. It was a sequential process with no coordination.

They redesigned the workflow so steps happened in parallel and added automated notifications.

Onboarding time dropped to 5 days. No training required.

Takeaway: Before blaming individuals, look at the process they’re trapped inside.

When Training Actually Works

Let me be clear: I’m not anti-training.

Training can be the right solution—when conditions support it.

Training tends to work when:

• The task or system is genuinely new
• People get practice and feedback after training
• The environment already supports correct performance
• The problem is truly a knowledge or skill gap

Training is often necessary. It’s just rarely sufficient on its own.

A Simple Performance-First Decision Path

Here’s how to pull these frameworks together:

1. What result is missing? (Kaufman)
Define the measurable gap in performance—not the training, the outcome.

2. Is the environment set up for success? (Gilbert)
Check Data, Instruments, and Incentives before assuming it’s a knowledge problem.

3. Under ideal conditions, could people do the task? (Mager & Pipe)
If yes, fix the system. If no, consider training.

4. Is the workflow sabotaging performance? (Rummler)
Look at handoffs, delays, and white space—not just individual tasks.

Only then should you even think about opening your authoring tool.

Real-World Example: Communication Training That Wasn’t

A client contact center was drowning in customer complaints. The operations VP requested “communication skills training” for all 120 agents. Urgent, two-week turnaround.

They could have built it. Would’ve been a nice project fee.

But they used the frameworks:

Kaufman: The real result wasn’t “better communication”—it was a 30% reduction in repeat complaints within 60 days.

Gilbert (Data): Agents had no shared definition of “good communication.” Some were measured on call speed, others on satisfaction. The metrics conflicted.

Gilbert (Instruments): The CRM hid key customer information three clicks deep. Agents were asking customers to repeat information the company already had.

Gilbert (Incentives): Fast call resolution was rewarded. Thorough problem-solving wasn’t.

Mager & Pipe: When we asked, “Could agents resolve issues well if conditions were perfect?” the answer was yes—they already did when supervisors were watching.

Rummler: The workflow required agents to log issues in one system, but solutions were stored in another. No integration.

They didn’t build a communication course.

Instead:

• Defined clear communication standards
• Fixed the CRM interface
• Aligned metrics to prioritize resolution quality
• Integrated the ticketing and knowledge systems

Complaints dropped dramatically in a matter of weeks. Not a single PowerPoint slide required.

The Job You Were Actually Hired to Do

Moving from “course builder” to “performance consultant” can feel uncomfortable. It means asking harder questions, pushing back on stakeholders, sometimes saying “Training won’t fix this.”

But the pioneers of HPT taught us something crucial:

Our job isn’t to fill heads with knowledge. Our job is to improve performance.

Sometimes that means training. More often, it means fixing the world people work in.

The next time someone asks you for a course, pause.

Ask about the result they’re missing. Check the environment. Test whether it’s “can’t do” or “won’t do.” Look at the workflow.

You might still build training. But if you do, it’ll be the right training, at the right time, with the environment ready to support it.

And that’s when learning finally sticks.

Further Reading: 

• Kaufman’s Needs Assessment
• Gilbert’s Human Competence
• Mager & Pipe’s Analyzing Performance Problems
• Rummler & Brache’s Improving Performance

Most of us are drowning in information.

Emails. Social feeds. Notifications piling on notifications.

You look away for one minute and miss three posts from a writer you actually wanted to read—because an algorithm decided you needed fourteen kitchen remodeling hacks instead.

There’s a better way to keep up with the things you care about. No fuss. No overwhelm.

It’s called RSS.

If the name sounds technical, relax. This guide is for regular humans, not engineers.

Let’s get you set up in the next few minutes.

What RSS Actually Is (In Plain English)

RSS is basically a “follow” button for the entire internet.

Any time a site you follow publishes something new, RSS quietly pulls it into one clean feed. You stay in control.

No algorithm deciding what you see. No ads wedged between articles. No emotional manipulation engineered to keep you scrolling.

Just updates from the places and people you choose.

If you want the technical backstory, here’s a solid explainer: https://www.w3.org/RSS/

But you don’t need any of that to use it.

Why RSS Is the Best Way to Keep Up With What Matters

You never miss posts from your favorite creators.

Everything shows up in order. Nothing gets buried by a feed curated for engagement metrics instead of your interests.

You get a quieter, calmer reading experience.

No autoplay videos. No “recommended for you” rabbit holes. No rage-bait in your peripheral vision.

You can ditch email for newsletters (if you want).

Some RSS readers let you follow newsletters directly inside the app. That means you enjoy your favorite writers without choking your inbox. This feature usually costs a few bucks a month (Feedly, Inoreader, and Readwise Reader all offer it), but even free RSS plans give you the bigger win: clarity and control.

You build your own personal internet.

Your interests. Your pace. Your feed.

Step 1: Pick Your Reader

Here are my three favorites:

Feedly — Best for most people. Simple, works everywhere, beginner-friendly.

Inoreader — Great if you love organizing. Powerful filters and folders once you’re comfortable.

Readwise Reader — Premium “everything in one place” tool. Combines RSS, newsletters, YouTube, PDFs, and highlights.

Any of these will work beautifully. Pick one and create a free account. You can’t go wrong.

Step 2: Add Your First Site

This is where it gets fun.

In your reader’s search bar, type the name of a site you love. Or paste the full URL. The reader will find the feed automatically.

To test it out, here is one you can add right now:

mike-taylor.org — Hand-picked research, tools, tech, and weekly discoveries.

You just built the foundation of your feed.

Step 3: Add a YouTube Channel (Optional)

Copy the link to any YouTube channel you follow. Paste it into your reader.

Done.

Every new video from that creator will now show up like a regular post. No ads. No “Up Next” spiral. No algorithm trying to keep you watching.

Step 4: Add a Newsletter (Optional—Usually a Paid Feature)

If your reader supports it, you can follow email newsletters directly in RSS.

Just paste the newsletter signup link or use your reader’s “Add Newsletter” option. Future issues arrive in your RSS feed instead of your email inbox.

Your inbox stays clean. Your brain stays focused.

Step 5: Create a Few Simple Folders

Don’t overthink this part. Start with something like:

A-List — Sources you’d actually miss if you skipped a day.

B-List — Great content, but you won’t lose sleep if you fall behind.

News

Learning & Ideas

Creators I Follow

This structure keeps RSS from becoming its own kind of overwhelm. You’re curating as you go, not drowning in a new flood.

Step 6: Let It Run

Give it a day.

Tomorrow, you’ll open your reader and see a clean feed of exactly the things you care about—and none of the things you don’t.

RSS feels like magic once the posts start flowing in.

How to Use RSS Comfortably Every Day

Here’s a routine that keeps things peaceful:

Daily (10 minutes)

Scan your A-List folders for anything new. If you have extra time, browse your B-List and explore.

As you discover new sites, creators, and sources you like, add them. You’re building your own personal internet, one feed at a time.

What This Actually Feels Like

You open your reader.

Twelve new posts.

Every single one from someone you chose to follow.

No ads wedged between you and the ideas. No algorithm guessing what you want. No dopamine-engineered infinity scroll.

Just signal. Just substance.

It’s your internet now—built by you, for you.

If you start using RSS after reading this, I’d love to hear what feeds you added first. Drop me a note and tell me what you’re following.