Introducing Praxis, a members-only online publication on the future of productivity

Hi there, Tiago here.

As you may have seen, Medium has launched paid membership as a feature, and I’ve decided to take part by relaunching my publication, Forte Labs, as Praxis. It wasn’t an easy decision, as I know a paywall means fewer people seeing my writing.

I wanted to share with you why I decided the benefits were worth it, since you’ve taken the trouble to follow me.

I’ve come to the realization that what I do doesn’t scale, and it doesn’t need to. Reaching a mass audience requires writing on broadly accessible, universally applicable themes. It requires attracting huge numbers of views to generate any meaningful advertising revenue.

I find myself instead going in the opposite direction, looking for insights in more and more obscure and subtle niches. I’m personally tired of the same inane productivity advice endlessly repeated and recycled, and I want to speak directly to an audience that is also looking for something different.

I don’t believe the solutions to the problems we face in work are to be found in the mainstream. New insights are to be found in digging, in research, in interviews and examples of people actually trying new things in diverse fields.

This takes time, and hard work, and investment. Making my articles exclusive to paid members will allow me to continue to invest that time, while also narrowing my focus to a small group of readers who get the most out of them. If I can’t produce $5 of value each month for them, I shouldn’t be writing in the first place.

I also have learnings from my consulting and coaching that I can’t share publicly, that I need to test and refine before they see a wider audience.

I hope you’ll join me for what is very much an experiment in a new format for writing online. It will certainly evolve dramatically over the coming months, but I can promise that I will do my best to build a community and to provide value in the most effective way I can.

Click here for the full explanation of membership, and to sign up.

Please email me back at tiago@fortelabs.co if you have any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you.

Tiago