Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

January 30 x 30 wrap up

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Another 30 x 30 challenge is behind us. Did it help you get more genealogy research or genealogy organizing done? Please share in the comments!

I had a good month. I missed two days but did research the other 28 days. On four of those days, my research consisted of attending Amy Johnson Crow’s All About Ancestry webinars, which were 90 minutes to two hours long, so that helped with my daily average. Over the course of the month, I averaged 44 minutes a day for a total of 22 hours of research. That feels great!

One of my goals was to eliminate my backlog of downloaded documents I needed to process. On January 1, I had 77 documents in the backlog. During the month, I downloaded 23 new documents and processed a total of 90 documents, leaving me with a backlog of 10 documents still to process. Hooray! I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about my ancestors.

If you participated in the challenge, please leave a comment. Did the challenge help you get more done than you otherwise would have? Are you pleased with your progress?

I’ll probably do another challenge in March, so keep an eye out!

January 30 x 30 mid-month check in

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It’s (past) the middle of the month and it’s time for those of us doing the 30 x 30 challenge to check in and report on how it’s going! I haven’t missed a day, but I have had some days where I was not able to do a full 30 minutes of research. But my average is above 30 minutes a day (so far this month) because I was able to put in a couple of long sessions.

Last night I remembered at bedtime that I hadn’t researched, so I snuck in 15 minutes and processed a newspaper article from my backlog of unprocessed documents. My backlog, which numbered 88 on December 25, now stands at 28. I’m getting there!

One of the reasons I’ve been successful with this challenge is that on January 13 I tested positive for COVID. I’m vaccinated and boosted and I caught Omicron. My symptoms were mild (I felt crappy only one day) but I was required to isolate in the house for five days. It meant I had to cancel client appointments and a trip to Walla Walla so I’ve had lots of time at my computer. It’s been refreshing to be able to focus on my research! (That was definitely a silver lining about my catching COVID.)

How about you? If you’re one of the three dozen or so people who signed up for the challenge, how’s it going? Please let us know in the comments.

Keeping track of my backlog busting

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One of my primary goals in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge is to get rid of the formidable backlog of documents to be processed that I had let pile up. I had a backlog of 88 files that I had not processed. I disappoint myself when I do that. But I’m bound and determined to get caught up this month.

To help keep me motivated, I created a little spreadsheet as I’ve done in the past. Here’s what it looks like:

I started January with 77 backlogged files because I was able to reduce the number from 88 in late December. Here are a few things I like about this spreadsheet:

  • I can highlight the Amount of Time Worked column and see the total number of minutes for the month and average number of minutes worked per day. (Right now, I’m at 3 hours of work and an average of 32 minutes a day.)
  • Entering the numbers and watching the # remaining column go down is very motivating to me!
  • If I have to do a little research that results in my downloading documents in order to process a document, this spreadsheet takes that into account. I want to have a net reduction each session!

I do this in Numbers on my Mac, but it could easily be done in Excel or Google Sheets. I’ve also been keeping track of the types of documents I’m processing my informal Evernote research log.

I hope you find this a little bit helpful and that your 30 x 30 challenge is going as well as mine!

 

What would you like to hear about?

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I’ve been asked by MyHeritage to do a Facebook Live presentation on their Facebook Page about organizing your family history. When I asked them for a specific topics they’d like me talk about, they said that they’re open to any ideas I might have. The presentation will be 40 minutes of Powerpoint, followed by 20 minutes of Q&A. I have some ideas, but I thought I’d turn to you smart people, since I know you are interested in genealogy organizing, to see what you think would be a good topic for this presentation.

In case you want to attend and ask questions, the Facebook Live will be on Monday, February 7, at 12 noon Central Standard Time. I’m pretty sure the recording of it will remain available. I’ll be sure and post again about that.

I’m excited by this opportunity to reach MyHeritage’s huge audience and I thank you in advance for your input!

Join the mailing list!

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.