Announcing the Praxis Fellowship

It is my pleasure to announce the new Praxis Fellowship, a writing residency for emerging thought leaders at the frontier of modern productivity, creativity, and knowledge management.

In December of 2015 I was invited to become a Writer-in-Residence for Ribbonfarm, a niche but influential blog that had made a big impact on my own intellectual journey. I had exchanged a few messages with the Editor-in-Chief of the site, Venkatesh Rao, who offered me the opportunity after seeing my writing on my own fledgling blog.

Over the next year, I would write five long-form essays for Ribbonfarm, in which I developed my ideas on modern productivity. Those ideas had been simmering on the backburner for quite some time. But it was the firm push from someone I looked up to, plus guaranteed distribution to thousands of Ribbonfarm readers, that gave me the confidence to put them into writing.

Those essays became the bedrock of my business, bringing me countless opportunities to collaborate and learn from others. I launched my paid membership off the momentum of those essays, incorporated them into my online course Building a Second Brain, and to this day they still serve as one of the best introductions to my work for newcomers.

I’ve long wanted to offer the same opportunity to promising writers in my field – to give them the exposure and feedback needed to develop new ideas to their full potential. And in the process, nurturing new voices with new ways of seeing things in a field that is sorely lacking diversity. We are living in the midst of an explosion in productivity tools, and my goal is for this Fellowship to push forward and broaden our current thinking on how and why they should be used.

We are welcoming three inaugural Praxis Fellows: Carrie Ben-Yisrael, Frank Anaya, and Christina Luo. All three were formerly Alumni Mentors in our Building a Second Brain course, and we’ve invited them to continue to develop the work they’ve done with our students. They each offer new perspectives that are missing from the conversation about what it means to be an effective person in the world today.

Fellows will commit to writing 3-5 essays over the next three months on a topic of their choice, related in some way to the mission of “exploring the frontier of modern work.” This could include developing a new methodology, introducing a new framework, exploring an unusual angle or approach, or telling an illuminating story – anything that sheds light on the nature of modern work and how to perform it more effectively and mindfully. 

They will receive an honorarium, editorial support, and guaranteed distribution via this blog.