So in the film, and consequently, the book and the real story called Black Hawk Down, there was an instance that really caught my attention. Maybe you can imagine there’s an active theater of combat. There’s a general who’s in the communications room, in the war room, and he’s expecting results. He’s expecting to see things get done so that he can pursue the goals that he as a military leader, hopefully to save lives as such. And he’s waiting for something. It’s the actor Sam Shepard, the late Sam Shepard, who plays as general. And he’s waiting. I don’t remember what it was. I think it was something from the Air Force or something from a helicopter, some reinforcements. But he’s saying to whoever was on the aside in the communications, Where is my ex? Where is my reinforcements? When are they going to be in position? And he says back at him, says, 10 minutes. And then he says something very interesting, and it was very memorable. I learned a really good life lesson from it. And he says, nothing takes 10 minutes. And it’s almost humorous when you hear it. He sounds like some disconnected authority figures saying, nothing takes 10 minutes.
Could you imagine taking that one step further and bringing it into your own life? You You call the order of pizza and you say, I want the pizza in 10 minutes. Or you take your car to a garage and you say, hey, I want my car fixed in 10 minutes. There’s a disconnect in regards to time and expectation. But Sam Shepperts character, the general, he was, I believe, in the right to say, nothing takes 10 minutes because in his wisdom, he knew what to expect within the time frame, within the time frame that he gives the soldiers that he works with. And my question is, to you, what results can you expect to see in the time frames of your life? Is your culture broken? My name is Adam E Rosenfeld. I have seen it happen so many times. I’ve seen it happen in churches, in municipalities, in schools, in places of work. Is your culture broken? I’m here to help you fix it using your creative power. Visit adamleerosenfeld.com and subscribe there to make sure you never miss a podcast or a post or anything I’m offering in terms of creative coaching. I want to help you and I want to keep the relationship going.
So please visit. Back to what I’m talking about, about how you can say to yourself, can you expect something to happen in 10 minutes? And what I’m getting at is that we have to talk about time. We have to talk about expectations. And there’s a term, and I’m going to go as far as I’m going to go with language in this term, but it’s a term called BS jobs or garbage jobs. And there’s an idea that these meaningless jobs are on the rise, that we’re in a situation where people go to work and they don’t find meaning in their work. And that is just tragic. And now I’m talking to you. I’m saying, do you go to work and do you find there’s a lack of meaning there? Do you find that you’re spending your precious work hours on something that’s meaningless. And I really believe happiness to be meaningful progress on meaningful goals. So it makes me think of time frames and the connection between time and expectation. What can you expect to get done in a work day? What can you expect to get done in a work week? There’s this famous quote that says people overestimate what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in 10 years.
That’s a disconnect between time and expectation. And maybe you can identify with that. Maybe you go to a job and you expect your life to change in one year. You expect to have more money, you expect to have more influence, you expect to have more free time. And You overestimated. You didn’t see those results in one year. Then you look back 10 years in your life and you’re like, wow, look at where I am now. And look at the great things that have happened for me now. That might be the case. It makes you think, I have a dear friend. He And he told me once that he worked for a corporation and he managed to go for two weeks without really getting any work done. Maybe you could identify with that. Maybe you could identify with having a work day and you’re like, oh, I didn’t get anything done today. And then my friend was talking about two weeks. And honestly, I can identify with that. It could be hard in a corporate setting to get any work done. And then today is why with today’s distractions. On the other hand, I remember a story from a Hollywood producer, Brian Grazer, where he started out.
He got his foot into Hollywood through the mail room in some studio, and he somehow got eight hours of his work done within one hour. He got eight hours of work done with one hour, and then he spent the rest of his day. He snuck into some producer’s office. He wasn’t there and worked from his office on his own projects. And that’s how we get story of Brian Grazer, who became a very big producer. So whatever your work life looks like, I want to create a healthy time, expectation, reality so you get results, so you get meaning. And my question for you is, do you have repeatable processes? Do you have things that you do that repeat themselves? Sometimes you feel that they lose their meaning as you repeat them. I have various accounting tasks that I dread and they repeat themselves. And I have other repeatable tests, like blog posts and even this podcast, things that are repeatable. Now, If you have that, here’s what I want to encourage you to do. Number one, identify your repeatable processes. Number two, write them down in a checklist. And don’t be afraid to get granular. Just take those things that you do and you write them down.
I write them down in Evernote. That’s the app that I use because honestly, to me, it’s the quickest. I’m not looking for bells and whistles here. I just want a checklist, and you could do it with pen and paper, but don’t hesitate to get granular. Sometimes, step one, turn on my computer. Step two, go to this link. Step three, get a pen. Step four, get a paper. Get as granular as you need to be so that you save time time and energy thinking about the next step, thinking about the step that you’re in. And keep that checklist handy. That checklist could be pen and paper, it could be on your desk, or it could be something digital like I do in Everno. And Then number three, create an expectation to ship repeatable work faster so you can move on to other meaningful work. I hope that your repeatable work is meaningful. It might be meaningless. It might be BS work in your life. I I can’t guarantee you what it’s going to look like. But either way, meaningful or meaningless. I can help you ship it faster by making checklists. If you make checklists that are granular, you can get that work done faster.
You can get a better connection between time and expectation to where you say nothing takes minutes. None of the steps here take 10 minutes. They’re fast. And then you can move on to what I call growth work, work that I feel is meaningful. And you can be spending your time making meaningful progress on meaningful goals, achieving happiness. I’m Adam N. Rosenfell. I provide creative coaching, and I want to help you fix your culture, if your culture is broken, by using your creative power. Feel free to visit adamleerosenfeld.com and subscribe so you never miss a post or you never miss a podcast. Thanks for being with me today. Have a great day.
