Forte Labs

The modern frontier of productivity.

Oct 18, 2018

The Maker’s Guide to Content Curation, Part 2: The 7 Pillars

In Part 1, I argued that curating the content of others was an excellent way to start creating content of one’s own, whether your goal is ad

Dec 28, 2017

Progressive Summarization III: Guidelines and Principles

In Part I, I explained Progressive Summarization, a method for easily creating highly discoverable notes. In Part II, I gave you many exampl

Jun 5, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #17: States of Mind

In Part 16, we refined our understanding of Return on Attention by taking into account our biggest constraint as knowledge workers – not jus

Oct 17, 2020

Negotiating Your Contract

Once you’ve accepted an offer for the publishing rights to your book, it’s time to draw up and sign a binding contract. Many of these contra

Dec 19, 2017

Supersizing the Mind: The Science of Cognitive Extension

You enter your kitchen for a quick lunch: how is it exactly that your brain solves the problem “prepare lunch as efficiently as possible”? Y

May 30, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #12: Just-In-Case to Just-In-Time

In Part 11, I introduced the concept of a “critical path” of tasks in a project, and the rationale for pushing tasks as late as possible on

Dec 7, 2018

Interview with Weihaur Lau of Created Living, on Health and Wellbeing for Conscious Leaders

I recently interviewed Weihaur Lau of Created Living, a health and wellness-based coaching program for leaders.  Weihaur’s coaching business

Jun 3, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #16: Effective ROA

In Part 15, I advocated for multithreading, or weaving together multiple projects to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and synergie

Sep 2, 2018

The Personal Narrative Vision

In my previous article on how I perform my Annual Review, I briefly discussed the Personal Narrative Vision (PNV) exercise. I’ve developed t

May 20, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #5: The Iron Triangle

In Part 4, I introduced the idea of “intermediate packets.” Instead of delivering value in a big project that spans huge amounts of time, we

Jun 1, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #14: Personal Productivity Networks

In Part 13, we looked at the benefits of Component Thinking, which involves thinking of any product we are working on as made up of subcompo

Dec 10, 2018

The Structure of Information Revolutions

In 1962, philosopher Thomas Kuhn published his landmark work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, forever changing our view of the histo

Mar 16, 2021

Introducing: Praxis Fellows Essays

Hello Praxsters!I have something special to share with you today: the first contributions of our Praxis Writing Fellows!I recruited a few of

May 28, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #11: Late Starts on the Critical Path

In Part 10, I argued that digital knowledge work was fundamentally different than other kinds of work, because its structure, features, and

Jun 10, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #19: Explosive Inspiration

In Part 18, I introduced the idea that our states of mind come and go in “waves of motivation,” and that we should try to use them to our ad

Dec 31, 2019

My 26 Favorite Essays of 2019

As part of my year-end review, I always review my favorite reading of the year. These usually tend to be “long-form” online essays diving de

Dec 28, 2017

Progressive Summarization II: Examples and Metaphors

Let’s look at how a single source can proceed through the layers of progressive summarization. These are Layer 1 notes I took on an article

Oct 17, 2018

The Maker’s Guide to Content Curation, Part 1: Open-Sourcing Your Learning Process

One of the best ways to advance your career, start an extra income stream, or become an entrepreneur is by creating content.  By “content” I

May 23, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #8: Divergence and Convergence

In Part 7, I argued for the importance of interacting with information, instead of just passively consuming it. Interaction results in bette

May 23, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #9: Placeholders

In Part 8, we looked at divergence and convergence as the two fundamental modes of all creative work. Now let’s see what this looks like in

Jun 10, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #20: Speed as a Capability

In Part 19, I argued that continuously finding new sources of motivation was the most important challenge for knowledge workers, and that th

Aug 17, 2017

Strategically Constrained: How to Turn Limitations Into Opportunities

I first came across the idea that great strengths can emerge from great constraints in Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle is the Way. He takes

May 22, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #6: Evolving Deliverables

In Part 5, I introduced The Iron Triangle of Project Management and the idea that any given deliverable can be reduced or expanded in scope

Mar 16, 2021

Paranoid Productivity

By Christina LuoProductivity is about managing emotions as much as projects. Yet we often focus on productivity as a toolset more than a min