I don’t think you understand the changes listed at https://blog.medium.com/improving-how-we-calculate-writer-earnings-d2d3f4329b26. The calculation is not by how long a piece is, but rather how long you spend reading a piece…. The difference is subtle but important.

You have a membership. You pay X dollars. If you spent 1% percent of your time reading another member, you will be, in effect, giving that member 1% of your fee to that member. It doesn’t matter if the one piece by a writer is 10 minutes long or if there are ten separate pieces, by the same writer, each one minute long. Your contribution to that writer will be the same. Or you can contribute smaller amounts to more writers’ essays, each of which is as long as you like. The only thing you have to do is, actually, read. Theoretically, you are already doing that (mostly)…

You don’t have to change your reading behaviour at all. Nor will you have to change the amount of claps you give: claps will now be used to distribute to a wider audience. (think of it as a sort of passive aggressive curation…)