תדיר
ושאינו תדיר
תדיר קודם
Prioritize your life
so that the more frequent items
are handled
before
the common ones
- Talmudic axiom

Well, Talmudic scholars will dispute that "translation" of the axiom. However, it does reflect the message of the unstructured personality trait.

Not everybody is structured. Some people manage to live a fine life with a balagan.

However, if your lack of structure affects your life negatively, and you find that things are out of control, then it is a good idea to develop and follow an artificial structure. It should include the necessary basics that need to be accomplished without thinking about them. You will handle things on a regular basis. You will do them efficiently and you will have all of the advantages of a structured person.

Those who do consider this option should allow for some unstructured time in which you can "be themselves."

When does a person need to have a structured life?

At work. If you cannot handle your assignments and still get your regular things done, then you need a structure. This assumes, of course, that your job description is reasonable, and that you are not being asked to do the work of more than one person.

At home. If you can't manage the household and everything is in a turmoil then you need to create a structure. This structure can take the following forms:

A list of things that have to be done every Sunday, every Monday, every second week on a certain day, every 7th of the month or 9th of the month or every Rosh Chodesh, or the like. Print out this structured format so that you can do what is required when the day comes up. Rosh Chodesh might fall on a Monday which might also be every second Monday, for example, which means you will have three groups of things to handle. That's fine. Do them all. And make sure that they get done. Give them the priority over other tasks. You might also decide to do rounds. Those who prefer to do things on the computer can set up an appointment program such as Outlook to post the required assignments for repeating dates (such as every Monday, or the first of each secular month).

If you find that you just overlook things in the house, certain things that need to be checked periodically or you just don't even know what's going on in the house, then it might be good to have a printed list of things to look for in each room. You can then make your rounds every set period of time, say every 90 minutes, at 6 o'clock, 7:30, 9 o'clock, 10:30 and so on, so that you will be in control of the house. In this way you can check that things were not left out in the kitchen to spoil, that you have taken in the laundry before it suffers from too much sun, and so on.

Don't bypass these structured activities on days that are busy. It's those days that you need the structure the most. It's those days in which the problems will occur. Those are the days that you will be most thankful that you have this artificial structure.

Although you can vary the structure from time to time, do try to keep it as steady as possible. An unstructured person needs a routine and the routine should not change too often. When it does change make sure that you follow the new routine and not the old one.

You will have pages in which the structured items are written out either for those rounds or for specific things to do on each day. Don't do them by heart. Check the page itself all the time so that you can be sure that you are doing everything that needs doing.

Follow the order in which these structured items are listed on the page. The rounds take priority over the daily or weekly items.

In general, the smallest and most frequent time frame should receive the highest priority (see the Hebrew quotation at the top of this page). Thus, rounds, which are done every 90 minutes, should take priority over daily items. The daily things take priority over the weekly things. The weekly things take priority over the bi-weekly things. And so on. This can also help in which dinner is never prepared on time or that you take an inordinate amount of time preparing dinner for the next day. If dinner is prepared the night before then it will always be prepared on time and it will be prepared much more efficiently because you do want to get to bed.

You will tend to feel that you do not have time to do certain prioritized items, such as preparing dinner the night before. You may want to relapse into your previous and more familiar pattern. However, when you think about it, you do have the time. After all, the dinner going to be made. It takes the same time to prepare it the night that you eat it or the night before. That means that you will always be preparing one dinner every day.

You have a choice of doing that dinner under pressure, when you don't feel like doing it, because it's right before the time to serve it, and everybody is interested in eating and they're going to be disappointed that it's not ready. Or you're already going to have it ready from the night before, which means that it just has to be warmed up.

You may rationalize that it's better to have fresh cooked food than food that is cooked the day before.

There is some validity to this statement. It is a tradeoff. In the case of the unstructured person, there will be a major improvement in the situation if that food is prepared the night before, but only a minor improvement if the food is fresher by one day. It's not worth it.