Pushing Past Procrastination: How to Get Stuff Done
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Do you have brilliant idea that you keep
putting off or just aren’t able to bring to fruition? Or maybe it’s a small
task that never seems to get done? Author Phyllis Korrki is here to let you
know that you’re not alone. A reporter and assignment editor for The New
York Times, Korrki tackles the problem in her book, The Big Thing:
How to Complete Your Creative Project Even If You’re a Lazy, Self-Doubting
Procrastinator Like Me. She shared what she learned in the process of
writing her book — and why she pledges to be lazy for the rest of her life
— on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton
Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111.
An edited version of the transcript appears
below.
Knowledge@Wharton: I’ve
never interviewed somebody that has described herself in this manner or as part
of the title of a book.
Phyllis Korrki: It’s
pretty out there. Honest subtitle, isn’t it? The book itself is a very meta
book. It’s a book about creative projects, and my creative project is this
book.
K@W: What things did you
learn about yourself in the process of doing this book?
Korrki: The idea for it
came when I was writing a column in my job at the Times about
deadlines. I said in the column, which was also kind of a meta column, that the
only reason that I finished it was because I had a deadline, I was accountable
to my coworkers, and I would have endangered my reputation if I hadn’t finished
it. I thought to myself, how do we give that same sense of urgency to our own
personal creative projects that no one else is asking for? I explore that in
the book.
K@W: Has doing this book
changed your philosophy on your work at TheNew York Times?
Korrki: I think it’s opened
up my voice a little more and made it a little more personal. I think my
writing has gotten a little more personal. I don’t know if that’s good or bad,
but it has had that effect, I think.
K@W: You say in the book
that you are not a self-help guru. So what do you want people to take from
this? Maybe a little bit of understanding of what you went through and how that
could relate to their own situations?
Korrki: Exactly. The reason
I say I’m not a self-help guru is because I feel like I am suffering just the
way most people are, and I feel like I have gone through a lot of failures. As
I say right up front, I am very lazy. There is all of this sort of self-help
religion out there or inspirational kind of material that says you have to get
up every day and you have to have discipline and you have to work every single
day without fail on your project.
I would sometimes say to myself, I need to get up and do this,
and then I just stay under the covers and read a mystery or play with my cat
instead. I thought because I am that kind of person, I am not capable of doing
a big project. It turns out it’s not true. You can be lazy sometimes, you can
maybe not get up on one particular morning or two particular mornings. But if
you get up on that third morning, and if you get up enough, increments add up
and you can finish it.
K@W: There were times
where I saw a word or a phrase in the book that I latched on to. One is the
word love. A lot of what people do with their projects ends up being a labor of
love.
Korrki: Yes, I have a whole
chapter on love and work. Freud is the one who was reported to have said that
the most important things in our life, for us to feel fulfilled, are love and
work. I call them our two psychic tent poles. But it’s very rare for a person
to have complete success or fulfillment in both areas. So, we sort of put our
psychic energy into one or the other. We talk about a passion project as a
labor of love. We talk about our book as being like our baby. Very true.
K@W: You also talk about
drive being another thing.
Korrki: Yes, one thing I
think that is important for this kind of project is for it to be intrinsically
motivated. I make a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Where something really fulfills a deep creative, spiritual or intellectual
need, and it’s not driven by the need to be famous or get rich or get a lot of
followers on social media. That shouldn’t be the main motivation for that.
That’s not going to carry you through to the end.
K@W: How often do you
think that big thing that somebody is dealing with has nothing to do with their
daytime job?
Korrki: I don’t know
percentages on that, but I do talk about some people in the book who need to
have a job that is completely different. For example, the composer Phillip
Glas, before he was able to afford to work full time on his music, he drove
cabs. He was able to make enough working part time as a cab driver to devote
all of his mental energy to his music. I talked to another person who is a
janitor full time, and he likes that that doesn’t tax him too much
intellectually. He founded this museum devoted to the works of his late father.
I think it doesn’t matter who you are or what walk of life you
are in, a certain segment of the population has this yearning to do it. Not
everyone, and that’s OK. But if you do have it, it doesn’t matter what your
income level or your job is.
K@W: There were a couple
of pieces that I went back and read a couple of times over. They’re not what
you would consider to be the normal thought process in completing a project,
but you talk a little bit about health, maybe with your own situation.
Korrki: The thing that
happened was I got horribly anxious, and I got stomach pains and back pains. I
ran to my doctor and said, “Will you please, please give me some Klonopin so I
can relax?” She refused. She said, “Oh, it’s addictive,” so I was forced to
seek natural answers to it. I actually took breathing lessons, believe it or
not. I paid $350 to get a lesson in breathing. It really helped. What she told
me made a lot of sense because I was breathing very shallowly, I was breathing
vertically, I was breathing from the top of my body where there are barely any
lungs. That was limiting the flow of oxygen to my brain, and you need oxygen in
your brain to think clearly and creatively. You can apply this at work if you
get really stressed out. Just breathe from the middle of your body, so you use
your diaphragm, and breathe horizontally rather than vertically.
K@W: You also talk in
the book about nutrition. For a lot of people, nutrition in general is more of
a concern. But I guess when you get into a project outside of your work, a lot
of people will be like, “Oh, I’m just going to run through McDonalds. I’m going
to run through Wendy’s because I need to get a quick bite and get back to my
project.”
Korrki: Yes, you need to
have protein to work on a project. I was eating these big cinnamon rolls that I
got on a stand on the way to work. That gives you a huge rush and then
plummets. You plummet and you can’t think straight. This nutrition expert I
talked to said it’s really good to have protein for breakfast — eggs or even a
can of salmon or something like that. And again for lunch, emphasize the
protein. Then she actually said carbohydrates are fine for dinner because it
helps you sleep, and I have a whole chapter on sleep in my book and how
important that is.
K@W: Sleep is such a
vital thing, and so many of us these days are going faster and faster that
getting enough sleep is hard at times. It’s understated how important it is to
allow your body to recoup.
Korrki: Yes, and it’s part
my whole thing, I have this sort of Zen thing in my book, “To do is to undo,
and to do is to not do.” Part of the not doing is the sleeping because it
rejuvenates, it recalibrates, it resets everything. It’s almost a cliché, but
we all know we come up with our best ideas in the shower. That’s because we had
a chance to rest, and our neurons and our brains have had a chance to do all of
this other backroom kind of stuff that we have no idea what it is, but then
suddenly it emerges to the surface and gives us these great new ideas.
K@W: The idea of doing a
project, especially if that project is not linked to your day job, is balance.
I would be interested to see how you did it, and I’m sure a lot of the people
you interviewed talked about it as well. It’s got to be an unbelievable balancing
act to be able to pull these two things off at once and not have everything
come down around you.
Korrki: That’s true.
There’s been research done on willpower. Obviously you need willpower to do
your job and to work on this project. Research has shown that we have a limited
amount and use it on any number of tasks.
What I realized, and I think everybody needs to realize if
they’re going to do this balancing act, is that if you have a really rough day
at work and a lot of things going on, don’t expect yourself to be also able to
work on your project. And forgive yourself. That’s one thing, I’m really hard
on myself, and I would just beat on myself if I didn’t come home and work on
the book. But then I would realize, I had a rough day at work today. I just need
to relax. On the other end of the spectrum, recognizing that we all have days
at work that aren’t as bad. We might be doing something a little lighter that’s
just not as taxing on our brains. That’s the ideal time to work on the project.
K@W: You also talk about
illness being a factor in this as well. Some of the great thinkers and
developers have had to deal with illness in their lives at some point — it’s
understanding that if you’re sick, give yourself a breather.
Korrki: A funny thing is
that I found that illness offers constraints. A theme that kept coming up is
the importance of constraints. For example, I talked to this woman who had
broken her ankle and couldn’t leave her house. She translated the memoirs of
her grandmother in that time. So illness can do two things: It can give a deep
meaning to your life, and it can be a way to translate pain to something
creative and beneficial to others. It can also offer a constraint that will
allow you to get something done.
K@W: With all of the
interviews you did, were there any that surprised you with how they tackled
their big thing?
Korrki: I talked to this
doctor at the Mayo Clinic who was just incredibly busy. He has four different
jobs and also wrote a novel. He writes poetry and does all of these different
things. Well, then I found out his secret, which I relay a little bit in the
book. But I wrote about it in the sleep chapters that he is a short sleeper.
There’s a certain percentage of the population that only needs like three to
four hours of sleep a night. Aren’t they the lucky ones? I think a lot of CEOs
are actually short sleepers. That’s part of their secret, so they can get a lot
more done. It’s not fair, but there you are.
K@W: Do you have a next
big thing on the radar?
Korrki: Are you kidding?
I’m going to be lazy for the rest of my life. Just rest on my laurels. No, not
true! In my book, I mention a National Novel Writing Month. It’s a program
that’s been going on quite a while now, maybe 20 years or so. People get
together all around the world and write a novel in one month. If it’s 50,000
words, which is what they suggest, that comes out to 1,577 words a day, which
is very doable. So I’m going to do that this year in November.
K@W: Do you have an idea
what you want to write about?
Korrki: No, no,
not at all, and that’s fine, too. I’m just going to sit down Nov. 1 and see
what comes out.
K@W: I find it
interesting that you take on this challenge to write a book playing off an
article that you had written in The New York Times.
Korrki: I realized from the
article I had to create some kind of fake accountability. Because even though I
had a book contract, my book wasn’t due for like a year and some months, and I
did procrastinate. I had to find what I call fake accountability, methods of
sort of faking a sense of urgency to get things done.
K@W: But you also talk
about the fact that the experience becomes an important part of the process as
well. You want to be able to enjoy the experience as you’re going through it.
Korrki: That’s very
important. Sometimes it’s going to be unpleasant, but that’s about the
challenge of it. Most of the time, you have to really enjoy it for its own
sake. I talked to one fellow who initially wanted to invent his own software
program like the founder of Napster. He quit his job to do that. He fantasized
about being on the cover of Fast Company magazine, that was
his big fantasy. Then he came to realize, “Oh my God, I just hate this. I hate
doing this every morning. When I get up, I hate it.” He realized he wanted to
be a writer, and not everyone becomes successful as a writer. But he’s still
doing that because that’s what he truly, intrinsically enjoys.
K@W: A lot of this ends
up being what each person really has the time for, the understanding for and
the enjoyment of.
Korrki: Yes, it’s an
individual process for everybody. It may be that it’s not your time in life.
Maybe you aren’t at the age to be doing it. I dreamed of writing a book when I
was 11. Then in my 20s, I kept thinking, “Oh I really should write a book. ” But
the fact is I didn’t have any material, I didn’t have an idea, and it was for
the wrong reason at the time. I think I kind of wanted to be famous or
something. It wasn’t until I was in my 50s that I had reached the age where I
could write this book.
I talked to some wonderfully inspiring people — a man from
Jamaica who always wanted to record a reggae album. He said he came out of the
womb singing, but he joined the military and had a bunch of kids and a lot of
other responsibilities. Finally, he retired and went down to Jamaica to Bob
Marley’s old studio. He recorded that album last year at the age of 65. It’s
really inspiring how you can do it later in life
K@W: The potential success after completing the project can be
a negative if that’s the only thing that the people focus on.
Korrki: Yes, it’s really hard right now for me
to deal with the promotion aspect of it, to be kind of wondering about the
reviews and how well it’s going to do, because that really runs counter to why
I wrote the book. This is a hard stage for me to be in, although it’s nice to
do interviews like this where I talk about the substance.
K@W: You are in an
industry that is high pressure and going through quite an interesting
transition right now. Your paper is going through a transition.
Korrki: Yes, it’s
fascinating to be a part of.
K@W: How has doing this
changed or not changed your thoughts about career?
Korrki: That’s a good
question. I love my job. Obviously, the Times as an
institution has to be more concerned about the bottom line than I did about
writing this book, and I’m thankful to have a job where I work for a company
where I can support myself, and I’m able to do something like this and have it
actually reach others. But it would be nice maybe at some point to move beyond
that, to full-time authorship. But for now, it’s great being in both worlds.
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