It’s the middle of month already and time for a check in for those who are participating in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge. How’s it going? Have you been able to research daily? Are you putting in 30 minutes a day? Even if you’re not, have you found the challenge helpful?
It’s been a good, if not great, month for me. When there’s a 30 x 30 challenge my research is definitely more on my radar. I have researched every day, except one, which I feel great about. The one day I missed I had a good excuse: my husband was hospitalized for five nights at the beginning of the month with a heart ailment (he’s doing well now). One of those evenings I just plain forgot to research. But I was proud of myself for remembering the other days! (My Trello daily task management board has been outrageously helpful.)
This month I’ve been focusing on reducing my backlog and until yesterday I was doing great. I started out with 96 documents to process and I have now have 60. Before yesterday, there wasn’t a day that my backlog of documents went up–I’ve been trying hard to resist adding documents. (So far this month, I’ve processed 48 documents and added 12.) But yesterday in order to feel comfortable adding a couple of documents I’d found on last year’s research trip to my database I had to do a little more research and then downloaded four documents that I didn’t have to process.
I have averaged 24 minutes a day, but I hope to bring that average up this weekend. I plan to keep working on my backlog. I have a fighting chance of getting it down to zero, which would be amazing!
How’s it going for you? Please let us know in the comments!
I belong to both NGS and the Ohio Gen. Soc., which both have excellent quarterly journals and quarterly magazines. Both offer their members free access to their back issues in PDF form. I used to take them to appointments with doctors and the hairdresser, but it wasn’t really satisfactory for concentration. These days those appointments have mostly dried up. These publications deserve chunks of time with my undivided attention, in a place where I can take notes for further action, so I’ve chosen Thursdays (a light day for work) to keep current in them and also to work my way through the back issues as well as I can. Usually it engages me well enough to spend 2-3 hours before I need to work on something else.
Thanks for encouraging us to be systematic about improving our work. This isn’t a 30-minute endeavor, but it is a way of investing time on a regular basis to upgrade our knowledge and methods.
That’s a great way to spend a 30 x 30 challenge, Marian. I think I’ll try that next time with my backlog of NGS quarterlies and magazines. Thanks for the inspiration!