Someone who is great with how to develop good processes at work recently said something that made me think a lot about this as well.
Why have WIP limits? Well one of the reasons is to be able to create downtime where you can go watch a video or read a newsletter. So I've been trying to spread this message in my team when someone has asked "The WIP is blocking and I can't really help anywhere at the moment" by answering "Go watch a video or read or take a walk for 10 minutes".
Since you weren't explicit about it, having a PM or manager who
a) understands this concept, and
b) can communicate it to the team
is important and what you did here!
I mentioned in a comment above that with the Theory of Constraints in mind, sometimes the right thing to do for an individual contributor at a point in time is, nothing.
You went ahead and explicitly turned that into time to learn for them. Bravo.
Why have WIP limits? Well one of the reasons is to be able to create downtime where you can go watch a video or read a newsletter. So I've been trying to spread this message in my team when someone has asked "The WIP is blocking and I can't really help anywhere at the moment" by answering "Go watch a video or read or take a walk for 10 minutes".