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Episode #75

Your Chaos Is Not the Problem

Getting things done starts with knowing your orderliness score, then applying that limited capacity only to your highest priorities.

7 min 58s
Listen on:SpotifyApple PodcastsYouTube

Key takeaways

  • Take the Big Five personality test before setting priorities. Your orderliness score tells you how many things you can realistically focus on at once, and ignoring that number is why most goal lists fail.
  • Apply the percentage rule: if you have limited orderliness capacity, pick only as many priorities as that capacity can carry. The rest of your goals do not disappear, they wait.
  • Once you drop lower priorities, treat your remaining goals as your new 100%. Then redistribute your focus within each priority the same way.
  • Identify the areas where your orderliness is non-negotiable, business, health, family, and let the rest stay chaotic. Trying to be orderly everywhere guarantees nothing gets done anywhere.
  • Attach a why and, if useful, a consequence system once the structure is in place. Motivation tools work better after you have the right number of priorities, not before.

Timestamps

00:00The chaotic person who looks orderly
00:41You need a pattern that works for you
01:51Why and goal: the foundation
02:13Big Five and orderliness explained
03:37Where to spend your orderly capacity
04:54How to find your score and pick your priorities
06:14Focus on fewer things to actually finish them
07:34Goal, pattern, steps: the complete loop
Doe de gratis scorecard

Read the blog article

How Do Chaotic People Actually Get Things Done?

Show notes

What this episode is about

Getting things done as a chaotic person is possible, but it requires one thing first: knowing your own orderliness level. Paul Veth scores 30% on the Big Five personality trait of orderliness, and in this episode he explains how that single data point shapes everything about how he manages priorities across four businesses.

The Big Five as a practical tool

Paul uses the Big Five personality assessment as a foundational layer inside Identity First Media to map a person's identity. The orderliness dimension is central here. A score of 30% does not mean 30% orderly in absolute terms. It means 70 out of 100 people are more orderly than you are. That number tells you how many things you can realistically focus on at once before everything collapses into chaos.

  • Big Five test in English: Jordan Peterson's assessment
  • Big Five test in Dutch: personality.nl (Personikide)

The priority math

Paul's method: write down 10 goals, then mark only the number your orderliness can support. For him that is three. Once you drop the rest, those three become your new 100%. Your orderliness capacity then needs to be distributed within those three, not across everything. The same logic applies inside each priority. Business is not one thing. It contains features, leads, cash flow, customer service, product. You still have to choose within the chosen.

Key principle

There is always a pattern in getting things done. Brushing your teeth works because you have a goal, a pattern, and a repeating step. You do not think about motivation every morning. You just do it. That is the model. The chaos is fine everywhere else. Direct the orderly part of yourself only where it actually counts.

Topics

getting things doneBig Five personality testorderliness scorechaotic entrepreneurpriority settingIdentity First Mediaproductivity systemPaul Veth podcastfocus and productivitypersonality and performance

Full transcript

View full transcript
0:00
0This is how you really get things done and it's not what you're thinking. It's crazy. You know, I am a very chaotic person, but if I tell people this, they are like: you are from order. You are very orderly. And I'm not, I'm really not.
0:19
0I'm very chaotic in this room. I'm recording this video and the only part of this room that's clean and not a mess is this part you see. The rest is chaos. It's just chaos. And in my head as well, there are so many chaotic thoughts, so many ideas, so many things I'm wanting to do.
0:41
0It's a lot. But here's the thing, when you want to do something and get the job done, you have to have a pattern that works for you. And what you have to do is to understand, I know this video will reach you if you are very chaotic or just a little bit chaotic as well, because people who are very orderly, they are not watching this video because they already get things done. But stay with me, I am not going to say that you have to change or you have to grow into some kind of different person. You just have to understand there are parts of yourself that can be orderly as well.
1:24
0For example, brushing your teeth. You do it every day, I know you do, and that's part of order. It's a small order and yeah, you can say, okay, it's a pattern I learned as a child. Yeah, that's great, but you are still doing it. And there's the key, it's just a part you have to do, you know why you are doing it, that's an important thing.
1:51
0To get things done you always have to have a goal or a why. It's okay, people talk a lot about it. This video is not about that. Stay with me. So you can brush your teeth, you will wash your clothes, you will put in gas in your car or put it on the electricity.
2:13
0You are in some way orderly as well. And that's how I manage to get things done. I know for myself, okay, I am chaotic for 70%. This is from the big five personality test. It's also the thing we use at Identity First Media to track or to lay down the identity of a person.
2:42
0We use as one part the big five. And in the big five you have the number eventually of orderliness, and I am like 30%. It's not like a percentage, it's about 100 people in a room. How many are there more orderly than you are? For me, 70 people are more orderly than I am.
3:08
0So that 30, it means I can be orderly, but I don't like it to do it a lot. So, what I do is for the things I want to get done, the most important things for me, I put in that part of myself that can be orderly. The rest of the time I can be chaotic as well. It's okay. I can be chaotic about a lot of things.
3:37
0I don't care about these things. Or maybe I care and I love it to be chaotic about it. It's amazing. But I need to have it fulfilled every day, the chaotic part. So I promised myself, okay, there are a few things that I make so important for myself that my orderliness I'm putting into these parts.
4:00
0So, for me it's my business, my health and of course my family. And within these parts, there are still a lot of things that I need to make choices on, because if I say my business, okay, my business is big and I have so many ideas for features to grow it, to have different businesses, to get leads, better cash flow, better products, better customer service, etcetera, and therefore I make priorities. And I know for myself, okay, and I treat it as a percentage because it helps me. I say, okay, the maximum of things needs to fit in this 30%. Because if I want to be orderly in the rest, in the whole, it's not possible, and it will be chaotic all over.
4:54
0So if you want to get things done, first do this personality test. You can find the real good big five tests in Holland. In The Netherlands there is a good company. It's personality.nl but translated to Personikide. In English you can do the test from Jordan Peterson.
5:20
0Find out your orderliness and then you know, Okay, how much can you do? How much can you focus on? And make that decision for yourself. So if you write down 10 goals and you are orderly like me, Okay, mark three of them and say, Okay, these three are my priorities. But then still, if you drop the rest, these three priorities is your new 100.
5:50
0So you have to find out within every priority the, for me, 30%. If you are more orderly, it's a little bit more easy for you. Are you less orderly? Okay, maybe it's even more easy for you if you are less orderly, so you can only pick one thing to focus on. But I know you want to focus on everything because the rest is fun.
6:14
0It's fun to focus on a lot of things, but you won't get things done. So to get things done you have to focus on a few things and you have to know yourself how many things you can focus on and make them succeed. And if you do that in the right way, even you will get things done. And then, yeah, you can think about, okay, attach the why, attach maybe some bonus if you succeed or maybe a punishment if you don't. That's also about knowing yourself and you can go deeper into motivation and these personality traits.
6:54
0It helps you to find out who you are and how you can train yourself or how you can manage yourself to get more done. But it starts with this, because if there's no order, nothing can be done, because there's always a pattern in getting things done, like cleaning your teeth. You have to brush your teeth two times a day. I'm no dentist, two times a day, preferably electric, and then it will be clean all the time if you go to your checkups in an orderly way. It's just like that.
7:34
0So you have the goal, you have the pattern, you have the steps, and if you do it in an orderly way, you will succeed. That's it. That's how you get things done. Very easy, but hard if you are not focusing. On the pattern and if you are not aware of.
7:54
0On how much you can focus on these patterns.

Frequently asked questions

Can a chaotic person really build a structured system for getting things done?

Yes, and Paul Veth is a direct example. His approach does not ask you to become orderly across the board. It asks you to identify exactly how much orderly capacity you have using the Big Five test, and then spend that capacity only on the highest-priority areas of your life.

What is the Big Five orderliness score and how do you find it?

The Big Five is a personality model that measures orderliness as one of its dimensions. A score of 30% means 70 out of 100 people are more orderly than you. In English, Paul recommends Jordan Peterson's assessment. In Dutch, personality.nl (Personikide) is the reference he names.

How many priorities should you set if you have a low orderliness score?

Paul's rule: pick only as many priorities as your orderliness score can realistically support. For him at 30%, that is three. If you are less orderly, it might be one. Once chosen, those priorities become your new 100%, and you distribute your focus within them using the same logic.

How does Identity First Media use the Big Five in practice?

Identity First Media uses the Big Five as one layer of a person's identity profile. The orderliness dimension specifically helps map how a person manages structure, priorities and focus. It is part of the scientific foundation the platform uses to build identity-driven systems.

What role does motivation play in this system?

Motivation comes after structure, not before. Paul mentions attaching a why or a consequence system once the right number of priorities is already in place. Trying to motivate yourself across too many goals first is what causes the whole system to collapse back into chaos.

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Discussion

Paul makes the case that chaos is not what holds you back, but trying to force orderliness where it does not belong. What is the one area in your work where you stopped fighting your natural pattern and just built a system around it instead?

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