Let’s talk about how to choose content for your course and know what to prune away. Consider this: When we learn to drive, we focus on operating the car and driving safely—not the history of cars or how to rebuild a carburetor. Designing a workshop or course follows the same principle: focus on what your participants need to know to solve a problem or succeed right now.
The truth is, you can’t teach everything you know about your topic in one course. (Did you learn it all at once? Of course not!) and even if you could, you shouldn’t! Let’s dive into why and how to thoughtfully and intentionally choose core content for your course or workshop.
What to teach, and what to leave out: Designing your workshop or course with purpose
Imagine trying to sip water from a firehose— it would be difficult and overwhelming, with most of the water getting wasted. That’s what happens when you teach too much: participants get overwhelmed, retain precious little, and are likely to disengage—not the outcome you want.
When you overload a course with too much content, you risk:
- Cognitive overwhelm: Participants can only absorb so much at one time. They can be sponges, but even sponges have limits, right? If the content just keeps coming at them, they’re likely to tune out.
- Diluted learning: The more broad topics you include in one course, the less time you have to go deep with any one of them. Participants leave with surface-level knowledge instead of meaningful understanding and the ability to apply what they learn. Now sometimes, this is the goal. A one-hour webinar might serve the purpose of offering a surface-level understanding of something new without the expectation of building new skills. But you don’t want to dilute even this level of understanding with too much content for the time allotted.
- Lost engagement: Engagement is often the number one concern of course creators, and we work hard to earn and increase participant engagement, so much so that doing something that risks losing engagement is a non-starter. We simply can’t afford it. Overloaded courses feel scattered to participants, leaving them confused about the main takeaways or how topics relate to one another. As a result, they’re much less likely to stay engaged.
Instead of aiming to cover everything, focus on delivering the right amount of content in the time allotted so participants can absorb it, make connections, make meaning of newly learned material, and take actionable steps with it, feeling confident in applying what they’ve learned. What is the right amount of content? Well, that’s the math we have to do, and I’m not going to tell you it’s easy.
The key to content selection? Know your participants!
The foundation of a well-designed course is a deep understanding of who you’re teaching. Who are your participants? What do they already know? What are their challenges, pain points, goals, or priorities? The better you know them and their learning needs, the easier it is to decide which content to include and what to leave out.
Knowing your participants also helps you develop clear and appropriate learning objectives—specific action statements about what participants will know, understand, and be able to do by the end of your course. These objectives act as your guide, helping you identify content that’s essential to meeting participants’ needs.
How to choose: What’s core vs. what’s extra
When deciding what to include in your course, ask yourself these questions:
Microsoft AI-generated image.
- Is this information necessary for participants to achieve the learning objectives? (e.g., do they need to know the history of the automobile in order to drive one?)
- Will this skill or knowledge help them solve a specific problem or achieve a key goal? (e.g., will knowing how to build a carburetor help them earn a driver’s license?)
Learning the history of the automobile or how carburetors are built might be interesting but not essential for a new driver to succeed. Similarly, your course should focus on the “need-to-know” content—the information and skills that participants must have to achieve their current goals. You can always develop another course on history, carburetors, or oil changing for those who want to extend their capabilities later. In fact, this is great for those who want to build their business and extend their impact with workshops, courses, or other resources. It’s good to have more to offer!
Example of an overloaded course (and how to simplify)
Picture this: a workshop titled “Everything You Need to Know About Social Media Marketing.” It promises to cover every platform, every algorithm, and every trend. Participants might leave knowing a little bit about everything, but not enough to confidently apply anything.
Now imagine a more focused alternative: “Building Your LinkedIn Strategy for 2025.” This workshop is focused on one platform, offering depth, actionable takeaways, and clear results. Which one do you think participants will find more valuable? The second option delivers a clear promise and ensures participants walk away with skills they can use immediately.
Paring down content: The art of letting go
Once you’ve identified your core content, it’s time to edit again (yes, really!), and this is hard! Often, it’s the material our participants don’t need that is what we love most to teach! But it’s about them, so here are a few tips for this round of editing:
- Highlight the essentials: Start by identifying the absolute must-have content. The non-negotiables. You can’t drive without knowing what the pedals do! Everything outside of the must-haves is optional.
- Group and simplify: Combine similar topics or skills into one lesson or example. Think about what naturally hangs together. For example, instead of separate topics on “writing professional emails” and “creating effective subject lines,” you could combine them into one lesson or module on “Crafting professional email communication.” This approach ensures that participants see the connections among related topics and avoids cognitive overload. This is “chunking” content, and it’s a valuable learning strategy.
- Save the extras: I save vegetable scraps (carrots, onions, celery, and garlic) and freeze them. I make a delicious vegetable stock out of them that serves as a base for my soups and stews. I’m happy that: 1. they don’t become garbage, and 2. that they’re repurposed into something useful and valuable. If you have additional content that is important and valuable but not essential at this time, consider offering it as a bonus resource, a blog article, a follow-up mini-lesson, another course, or even social media content. No good content should go to waste just because we’re cutting out some pieces!
Letting go of content doesn’t mean it’s not important. It just means it’s not essential for this course. Think of it as editing a movie: you’re cutting the scenes that don’t move the story forward, even if those scenes are great on their own.
Your course as a starting point
Again, your course doesn’t need to teach participants everything about your topic. Think of the entire range of content you could teach as a starting point. By learning how to select content for your course, you’re not just creating a workshop—you’re creating an experience that equips participants with the skills they need to succeed.