Free Chapters: How to Turn Ideas Into Reality

I received so much help writing this book that it only makes sense to give away a big part of it for free.

If you are thinking of purchasing the book, these free chapters will give you an idea of whether the book is right for you:

• Chapters 1 and 2 provide an overview of the book: who it was written for, why I wrote it, and its structure.
• Chapters 3 and 4 are examples of project management tools in the book that I learned from communities of practice and that I have found helpful for entrepreneurship and creative work.
• Chapter 10 shares an alternative to the prevailing “taskmaster” approach to productivity.

Our job as entrepreneurs and creators is to turn ideas into reality.

Many of these ideas require more than the core work of our craft. In order to manifest these ideas in the world, we need to pull together varied types of work, possibly from many individuals, and bring them to harmony.

This orchestration of work is the age-old practice of project management.

How to Bring Ideas Into Reality presents a "minimum effective dose" of project management tools for entrepreneurs and self-employed creators: enough to help us orchestrate work but not too much that it distracts us from our actual job of building the business or practicing our craft.

Since this book is written for entrepreneurs and independent creators, it includes chapters not found in most project management books. For instance, Chapter 5: Cultivating Serendipity. Unlike full-time project managers, we have the power to start, end or change our projects at any time. This gives us the freedom to pivot toward unexpected good fortune. How do we increase our chances of getting lucky? How can we be more ready to pursue good fortune? In this chapter, I share the serendipity playbook I have compiled over the years.

A concern I frequently hear from people I train is how to persevere in their projects. In Chapter 9, I share tools for managing motivation. In Chapter 10, I share my journey from “wartime productivity” to “peacetime productivity.” The key to more creative and impactful projects is not to become a productivity robot. It is to understand and embrace our humanity.

One surprise that unfolded in the two years of writing this book was the release of artificial intelligence tools like the OpenAI GPT-3 Playground and ChatGPT. The book shows how we can use these A.I. tools to allow us to spend less time on project planning and focus more on creative work.

Following the hallowed traditions of project management, I trimmed down the scope of this edition so I could make the 2022 deadline. This 0.9th edition has everything except the appendices. You will get the full, unabridged version in the first quarter of 2023.

- Kahlil Corazo

Full Table of Contents

• 1. Project Management to Support Freedom, Entrepreneurship, and Creative Work
• 2. A Map of This Book
• 3. Orchestrate Work
• 4. Prevent Failure
• 5. Cultivate Serendipity
• 6. Clarify Your Vision, Purpose, and Pathway
• 7. Communicate
• 8. Focus Across Time
• 9. Lead Your Team (Including Yourself)
• 10. From Wartime to Peacetime Productivity

Appendices (coming in Q1 2023)

• Appendix I. How this book came to be: a trail of gratitude and a demonstration of the principles of this book
• Appendix II. What I left out in this book
• Appendix III. Project management software
• Appendix IV. Prompts for project management planning
• Appendix V. How to generate new project ideas
• Appendix VI. The Three Stallions and Five Steps to Stallion Rider Productivity
• Appendix VII. All "Take Action" prompts in one place