Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

January 2023 30 x 30 challenge wrap up

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Today’s the last day of January. Does it feel like the month lasted forever? Oh my gosh, January 1 seems like eons ago. In any case, it’s also the end of the 30 x 30 challenge. How did you do? Were you able to do genealogy research or organizing (or whatever your goal was) every day for 30 days?

My month started off GREAT! But then my research screeched to a halt on January 19. I traveled to Walla Walla on the 18th to settle my father’s estate (and I actually processed some documents on the plane) but, unfortunately, I picked up a virus of some sort while traveling. (I tested negative for COVID consistently on home tests and once I got home I went to urgent care and got a negative PCR test for COVID and a negative flu test.) While I was in Walla Walla it took all my energy to do what I was there to do and I was able to do virtually nothing else. So I did no genealogy research at all. By the time I got home to St. Louis last week I was really sick and barely able to function. I started feeling better yesterday and today my energy levels are almost normal.

What I think I want to do for myself and for my research is pick up where I left off and try to do another 11 days in a row to get back in the swing of the things. (I’m going to try to do the same thing with yoga, since my 30-day yoga journey also went off the rails.)

I sincerely hope those of you who did the 30 x 30 with me had a better time of it! I look forward to hearing about it in the comments.

January 2023 30 x 30 mid-month check in

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We’ve passed the mid-point of our 30 x 30 challenge. How is it going?

I’ve been pleased with my ability to remember to do research and then actually do it this month. I have missed three days of the past 16 and I’ve averaged 32 minutes a day, so I’m track. Two of the 13 research sessions were spent taking webinars. One was watching Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. And one was helping a friend with her genealogy and giving her a bit of a tutorial about Ancestry and Family Search. So it wasn’t all research on my family.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been good about logging my research in my simple Evernote research log, thanks largely to my putting a star in my spreadsheet every time I did it.

I go to Washington state tomorrow to settle my dad’s estate. I’m hopeful that won’t get in the way of daily research, though I might cut myself a little slack since I have a 12-hour trip door to door and my first flight leaves at 5:50 a.m.

I’m interested to hear how it’s going for you. Please let me know in the comments!

Motivated by a little star

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I’m in the midst of this month’s 30 x 30 challenge, where I’m trying to do 30 minutes of genealogy research a day. I’m also trying to whittle my backlog of unprocessed documents down and to remember to enter my work in my research log each session.

I’ll be posting a mid-month update next week, but today I wanted to tell you about a little tweak I made to my workflow that has proven to be very helpful in getting to me use my research log.

Four or five years ago I created a spreadsheet where I can keep track of my backlog and also log how many minutes I researched. I usually use this spreadsheet during 30 x 30 challenges and I just start a new tab for each challenge. (You can read more about this spreadsheet in my post Keeping track of my backlog busting from a year ago.)

This year I added a column where I place a little star after I log the day’s research. It’s crazy to me how rewarding having that little star is. (You can see it in the close-up above.) It not only provides a visual reminder to log the session log, but it also gives me a little jolt of happiness because I’ve earned a star.

I love it when I can come up with easy way to motivate myself!

 

Quick Tip #39: Gather up your learning resources

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one will help you take advantage of the learning resources you’ve downloaded. 

Gather up your learning resources

If you’re like me, you have learning resources scattered all over your hard drive. They’re so easy to acquire that they’re also easy to forget about. But you have a fighting chance of actually benefiting from them if you take the necessary time to gather up these educational materials (classes, handouts, guides, etc). A folder on your hard drive coupled with a checklist can help you stay on top of the the materials that you have acquired. Alternatively, you can store them in the cloud or in an app like Evernote. Wherever they are, the key is to put them together and schedule time to learn!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.