Chaotic productivity

Oh January, thank you.  For a relative change, I've had a personally productive week:

1)  Christmas letters DONE in record post-holiday time.  (Boo-yah!)

2)  Christmas thank you notes on schedule to be DONE tonight.  (Yes!)

3)  Church council Secretary minutes and materials from the 24 council and 9 voters meetings between May 2009 to May 2011 indexed, scanned, bound, and sent to appropriate parties.  (Only 7 months behind schedule, but....DONE!)

4)  Quest to devote 90 minutes per day to decreasing the height of the 20-foot pile o' backfiling on the counter behind my desk .....so far, on track, and today seems possible.   (And it feels GOOD.)

5) Run 100 miles in January?  Already 10-on-the-treadmill-in.  (At 8-minute-mile pace, no less, which feels FANTASTIC.)

Of course, perfection is still elusive.... In the midst of typing the above list, after another night of near-complete insomnia, a colleague informs me that between he and me, sometime in the past 6 weeks, we misplaced a folder of original client-signed paperwork required to open a new account.  Meaning between now and tomorrow one of us have to find it.   It could be in that 20-foot pile o' backfiling. It could be in one of the 13,000 other folders in my possession in this office. One of us could have slipped it into the recycling bin during the first week in December.

Who knows.  (Shudder.)  I now have to devote my afternoon's productivity (including my 90 minutes of planned filing) to finding this folder.

I'm reminded of an article I came across last night at the gym, in the October issue of Vogue magazine:  "Chaos Theory:  Forgetful and prone to distraction, Andrea Cooper set out to uncover the cause of her mental mayhem and found a large number of women unwittingly suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder."

In short:  Ms. Cooper consulted doctors and took tests after her daughter had been diagnosed and medicated for ADHD, thinking that since it could be a genetic condition, it might be her genes causing it;  a positive diagnosis might provide answers to explain some of her more scattered habits.  But in the end the doctors didn't find her behavior pervasive enough to fit the definition and, as she admitted, "I must confess I was slightly disappointed that I couldn't attribute my household piles to a medical condition."

Yes. I too, today, wish I had a magic drug that would make that missing folder reappear ... or perhaps transport me back 6 weeks to the point before it might have been lost.