Thirty years is a long time to work inside a single paradigm. Long enough to map its terrain. Long enough to see its walls. And eventually, long enough to know it is time to leave.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn describes how scientific progress is not a smooth, linear accumulation of knowledge. Instead, it advances through revolutions. Old models grow brittle under the weight of anomalies. Then comes the shift—a break, a reformation, a new lens.
What a gift we’ve been given. For all the upheaval and uncertainty of recent years, we have also inherited a rare moment: the chance to see with fresh eyes. The noise of collapse has cleared the space for clarity. We are no longer bound by the assumptions baked into our Industrial Revolution mindset—about scale, standardization, or the shape of learning. We get to ask again: what is this for? Who is this for? What does value look like now?
This is not a post about disillusionment. It is about clarity. You don’t abandon a paradigm because it failed. You leave because it succeeded in getting you to its limits.
For years, I tracked the fault lines: the metrics that no longer measured, the tools that shaped the problem more than solved it, the language that constrained what we could imagine. I borrowed from startups, strategy, anthropology, design. I traced the vectors of what could be, and wrote them down, one post at a time.
Now, I find myself standing in the very intersection where those vectors converge. Not with a new paradigm to declare—Kuhn said revolutions are recognized in hindsight—but with a conviction: the next lens is not an extension of the old one. It is orthogonal. It is felt before it is named.
So this is the final post. It is no longer valuable to run learning better. Optimization is deck chair shuffling. We have been given a gift.
I don’t pretend to know what’s next. But I will say: if you’ve read these posts, you already know where I’m going.
learn fast—J.
Running Training Like A Business 2.0 