Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

April 30 x 30 challenge: check in!

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We’re a little over halfway through the month and therefore more than halfway through the April 30 x 30 challenge. If you’re one of the folks who is participating, how have you been doing with the challenge of 30 minutes of genealogy research for 30 days in a row (or whatever version you’ve created)?

I have to admit, this has been a tough one for me. I knew going in that it was going to be a challenge to do daily research. In the first two weeks of the month, I was out of town nine days. And when I was home, I was busy with organizing clients. So, as I said in the post introducing the challenge, I adjusted my goal to be daily research, no matter how small, with an average of 30 minutes a day stretched out over the month.

I’m happy to say I’ve managed to research each and every day, but I’ve been flexible on what I have to do to meet that standard. Some days I’ve research more than a half hour. Others, only ten minutes. Yesterday, all I did was read an article in the new NGS Quarterly. But the fact is that each day I’ve had something to enter in my research log and that’s made me feel good.

Last weekend, I was able to get a few hours of research in on a rainy day, so I think I’ll achieve my goal of 900 minutes over the course of the month (though I haven’t been keeping close track).

How about you? Have you missed a day? And if you did, did you get right back into it? Please share your progress!

Succeeding at the 30 x 30 challenge

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We’re at the start of a new 30 x 30 challenge (30 minutes of genealogy research for a 30 days in a row). For me, throwing down the gauntlet of the challenge is enough to get me sticking to it–it’s my challenge after all. But I wanted to share some strategies to help you feel successful about the 30 x 30 challenge when the month is over.

This is something that my co-host, Shannon Wilkinson, and I discuss on our weekly podcast Getting to Good Enough, which is about letting go of perfectionism so you can do more of what you love. Perfectionism can truly get in the way of sticking with a challenge like this. But it doesn’t have to.

I think the key is building in flexibility to allow yourself to stick with the challenge, even if you miss a day or don’t put in the full 30 minutes. As I said in the post that started this month’s challenge, I’m traveling for a week this month and I know it will be hard to carve out 30 minutes of research some days. So I’ve adapted the challenge a bit. I will feel successful if I research each day (even if it’s just for a few minutes, as it was for me in the airport yesterday), with an average of 30 minutes a day accomplished. And I’m not going to be too upset if I miss a day.

Reader Kim adapted the challenge to be 900 minutes total for the month, regardless of how many days she is able to research. Beautiful! To keep track of those minutes, she found an Evernote habit tracker template and was kind enough to follow up with a comment on last week’s post and tell us how to access it. (Start a new note, click Template in the first line of the new note, select Personal Well-Being from the sidebar, then scroll down to Habit Tracker.) This is a tool that many of us can use to keep track of the challenge. I know it will help me ensure that I average 30 minutes a day. Thank you, Kim, for taking the time to share that information!

Sometimes planning for going off track can help you find success. Things come up that might prevent you from researching some days. Accept that as inevitability and think about how you’ll handle it if it happens. There’s no need to beat yourself up. Just keep going if that happens.

I don’t want you to drop the challenge entirely if you miss a day.  You can still get so much done if you research the other days. (And if you take a moment to plan the next day’s research at the end of a session, you can jump right in at the beginning of the next session, which makes everything easier.)

This week’s episode of Getting to Good Enough is called Getting Back on Track and it’s all about gently re-starting habits that inevitably fall by the wayside. If you have a half hour, give it a listen and you’ll hear some strategies for hopping back on the wagon if you fall off.

To your success!

Giving myself permission to be unfocused

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It's okay to be unfocused sometimesI’ve been so focused on being focused that my brain rebelled this weekend. We had a foot of snow here in St. Louis and I wasn’t going anywhere. That meant I could spend more time than usual on my genealogy research. But I just couldn’t focus. I was all over the place.

I blogged last week about how my research log keeps me focused. This morning, I discovered that I was so scattered that I didn’t even write in my log yesterday! I was able to recall most of what I did and create a log entry after the fact. But today I was equally scattered in my session.

And you know what? I’ve decided that’s okay. I did write my next steps in my log and when I get back to it tomorrow morning (which will by necessity have to be a short session), I’m hoping to have more focus. I think it was somewhat beneficial for me to clamber all over my family tree this weekend. Here’s why:

  • I’d been starting to get frustrated at my inability to find some specific documents that would help prove that a grave marker I found on Find a Grave indeed belongs to my family members. Walls (brick or otherwise) aren’t fun.
  • I started thinking about other resources I have in my possession that would be helpful to review (rather than focusing on my online research).
  • I certainly didn’t suffer from tunnel vision this weekend!
  • I decided to give Trello a try for some genealogy to-dos, inspired by comments on the 30 x 30 challenge post from reader Jerry Hereford. (More on that when I’m able to give it a more focused try.)
  • It’s always good when I’m placed in the shoes of people who are asking for my organizing help (genealogy or otherwise). If you sometimes feel unfocused, please know that I can empathize!

So instead of considering my hours of genealogy research this weekend unproductive, I’m going to embrace my lack of focus. I’ll note the ideas and clues sparked by my trips down rabbit holes and let them inspire future research. I’m not going to beat myself up. I’ll just try get back to my focused self tomorrow.

Photo by Robin Spielmann on Unsplash

New year, new 30 x 30 challenge

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It’s January 1. Happy new year!

There’s nothing like a new year to make me want to start up a new 30 x 30 challenge, in which I challenge myself to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research each day for 30 days. My last 30 x 30 challenge was in October 2018 and in the wrap-up post for that, I said I’d offer it up again in January. Do you care to join me?

I love this challenge because it’s not too difficult, but it is very beneficial. Doing a half hour of research a day is not a hardship (for me, anyway) most days. And the challenge makes me prioritize daily research. Otherwise, it can fall lower on my list of priorities and then it just doesn’t happen. In fact, my November and December were not great for my research, though I was able to pick it up again over the holidays.

I find daily research to be really beneficial. For me, 15 hours of research split over 30 days is much more valuable than a weekend of research where I work 7.5 hours a day. By researching this way, I stay in touch with my research and I stay focused. It also has helped me ingrain a habit of using my Evernote research log.

Please let me know in the comments if you’re up for joining me in this challenge. It’s a great way to start the new year!