The Big Thing: How to Complete Your Creative Project Even if You're a Lazy, Self-Doubting Procrastinator Like Me

by Phyllis Korkki Narrated by Sandy Rustin

Overview

A New York Times business journalist explains why it's important for people to pursue big creative projects, and identifies both the obstacles and the productive habits that emerge on the path to completion-including her own experience writing this book.

Whether it's the Great American Novel or a groundbreaking new app, many people want to create a Big Thing, but finding the motivation to get started, let alone complete the work, can be daunting. In The Big Thing, New York Times business writer and editor Phyllis Korkki combines real-life stories, science, and insights from her own experience to illuminate the factors that drive people to complete big creative projects-and the obstacles that threaten to derail success.

In the course of creating her own Big Thing-this book-Korkki explores the individual and collaborative projects of others: from memoirs, art installations, and musical works to theater productions, small businesses, and charities. She identifies the main aspects of a Big Thing, including meaningful goals, focus and effort, the difficulties posed by the demands of everyday life, and the high risk of failure and disappointment. Korkki also breaks down components of the creative process and the characteristics that define it, and offers her thoughts on avoiding procrastination, staying motivated, scheduling a routine, and overcoming self-doubt and the restrictions of a day job. Filled with inspiring stories, practical advice, and a refreshing dose of honesty, The Big Thing doesn't minimize the negative side of such pursuits-including the fact that big projects are hard to complete and raise difficult questions about one's self-worth.

Inspiring, wise, humorous, and good-natured, The Big Thing is a meditation on the importance of self-expression and purpose.

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2016 - AudioFile

Long-term creative projects and career goals are often tied up with personal issues that give them an unmanageable tension, says Korkki, a NEW YORK TIMES journalist who writes with candor and psychological sophistication. Narrator Sandy Rustin, narrating with youthful intonation and conversational cadences, mirrors the author’s vulnerability without diminishing the validity of her insights and experience. Referencing her own struggles to get busy working on her “big thing” (this book), Korkki unpacks every possible attitude and personal practice that can get in the way of progress, including fear of failure, crippling self-doubt, and sometimes fear of success. More than any other audiobook on this type of procrastination, this one brings these dilemmas down to earth in a way that will give listeners new freedom to choose—and more energy to move forward with their lives. T.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Britt Peterson

…Phyllis Korkki's book, The Big Thing—which…performs the trick of narrating her completion of the book she's writing—is both slow and fascinating. It's slow in the way hearing about someone finishing her book day after day after day in real life can be. And it's still fascinating, because Korkki is such a sympathetic subject, and her hodgepodge of a meta-book—part Malcolm Gladwell-lite behavioral psychology, part self-help writing guide—always manages to be charming.

Publishers Weekly

06/13/2016
Spurred by an impending deadline for a column, New York Times assignment editor and reporter Korkki turned her difficulty writing the piece into the subject of this book. In it, she asks why so many creative people stall out. Moreover, how do the ones who make it keep their drive? Korkki sets out to help people approach their long-term projects with an eye toward actually getting the work done. These projects can be traditionally creative (books, paintings) or organizational (start-ups, charities). In any case, making progress on them requires tuning out the distractions of everyday life, committing wholeheartedly, and doing what one loves out of love, not for wealth and fame. In order to get to work on one’s “big thing” and keep working, she recommends breathing and relaxation, concentration even through illness, taking necessary breaks, managing day jobs while working, and maintaining relationships with loved ones. More of a meditation than a prescriptive lesson, this is a helpful if not particularly fresh guide to getting one’s heart’s project moving. (Aug.)

Booklist

[Korkki’s] thoroughly researched stories, intriguing interviews, and self-deprecating style create a fun, thought-provoking read. If you enjoy good journalism and want to create a big thing of your own, read this book.

Tom Rath

A deeply practical guide to doing something that will last long after you’re gone, The Big Thing is loaded with tips, stories, and research. If you have something important to share with the world, The Big Thing will inspire you to get it done.

Greg McKeown

So many people end up making a millimeter progress in a million directions instead of bringing forth the masterpiece that is within them. In The Big Thing Phyllis Korkki shares a personal treatise into why we struggle in this way—and, importantly, what we can do about it.

Mason Currey

This is a profound book, suffused with insight into the creative process and empathy for the chronically blocked and uncertain among us. Essential reading for anyone who has struggled to make progress on a cherished personal project.

Adam Grant

A candid look at why we keep our foot on the brakes with our most important ideas-and how to convince ourselves to step on the gas.

Library Journal

06/15/2016
To overcome procrastination, a writer pens a book about the subject, but does she ever finish it? Yes! This is not a text about creativity, per se. Instead it is about setting deadlines and devising smaller, manageable tasks and figuring out what stands in the way of one finally getting going on that "big project," whether it's writing a book, producing a work of art, starting up a company, or building an app. Part self-help, part memoir, the volume provides examples of a wide variety of people and their undertakings. Korkki, assignment editor for the New York Times Sunday Business section, looks at psychological factors that hold people back and provides practical methods for making plans a reality, often trying them out on herself first. She also considers those of us who do not have this deep-seated artistic urge. Well written, in a breezy confessional style, it is an intriguing work for people in either camp. VERDICT While reading this might prompt yet another means of procrastination, it can also give readers the tips and inspiration they need to get started (or restarted) on their own "big thing." Recommended for public libraries.—Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

AUGUST 2016 - AudioFile

Long-term creative projects and career goals are often tied up with personal issues that give them an unmanageable tension, says Korkki, a NEW YORK TIMES journalist who writes with candor and psychological sophistication. Narrator Sandy Rustin, narrating with youthful intonation and conversational cadences, mirrors the author’s vulnerability without diminishing the validity of her insights and experience. Referencing her own struggles to get busy working on her “big thing” (this book), Korkki unpacks every possible attitude and personal practice that can get in the way of progress, including fear of failure, crippling self-doubt, and sometimes fear of success. More than any other audiobook on this type of procrastination, this one brings these dilemmas down to earth in a way that will give listeners new freedom to choose—and more energy to move forward with their lives. T.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-05-25
A New York Times business reporter shares her wisdom on creating and completing that elusive back-burner dream project. Korkki's debut, a crisply written meditation on goal achievement, was spurred by an ambitious article she'd written on deadlines. Though the overall process of penning the book was "rough and halting" and the idea had been gestating for decades, it evolved into a learning process for an author plagued by laziness, procrastination, and a barrage of distractions. She shares her personal journey through charming anecdotes and notes on preparatory self-care and via an extensive collective of interviews with psychotherapists, who coach aging adults on their goals; neuroscientists, who study cognitive decline in the middle-aged; dream-interpreting psychoanalysts; and a Jamaican reggae artist who recorded his first full-length album at age 65. Korkki also shares her own path of bringing the book to publication, including the climbing of a mountain with a Mayo Clinic physician. Naturally, she writes, a steely sense of focus, consistent motivation, commitment, and patience are key, but roadblocks like imperfection, self-doubt, and uncertainty are also very much a reality. "Each person who works on a Big Thing experiences limits that can be accepted and also harnessed," writes Korkki. "Even if the limits seem to be negative, they can be transformed into something positive." Hopeful and inspirational, the author profiles extraordinary people making their own aspirations a reality while battling addiction or physical and mental disabilities. The book is grounded in the cultivation of self-confidence and empowerment, and these elements are paramount particularly for an older generation wishing to leave a commemorative legacy in their wake ("the resolve of generativity"). With a supportive tone and gentle but insistent nudging, Korkki urges readers to creatively seize their own great endeavor as it can prove "one of the best ways to connect with the world." Insightful, encouraging, and universally practical.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173714701
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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