It’s the end of another 30 x 30 challenge and it’s time to share how you did. I’m sorry to say that I did not have a good month. As I mentioned in the mid-month check in, I had trouble remembering in the first half of the month. Things got worse in the second half because I was in Walla Walla visiting my family from October 18 to 28. I had some nice reminiscing time with my father and my aunt, but mostly I was kept so busy with various tasks for them (and my brother) that I did virtually no research. I was able to process a few documents from my backlog on the airplane, but overall, the last half of the month feels like a wash.

But you know what? I’m cutting myself a lot of slack. I was not able to prioritize genealogy research and that’s okay. I know better months are in my future!

If you participated in the challenge, please let us know in the comments how it went. I’m hopeful it went well for you, but there’s no shame in admitting you didn’t have a great month.

I plan to do another challenge in December or in January, depending on how my December looks.

We’re at the halfway point of the October 2021 30 x 30 challenge. How is it going?

I have to admit I’m not having a great challenge. I kept forgetting at the beginning of the month, so I missed a couple of days. Then I remembered, but didn’t have time to research much. So I’ve managed to do some research–but nowhere near 30 minutes–all but three days. I have hopes that I’ll have time for some long research sessions in the remainder of the month to make up some of the time. But even if I don’t, I’m pleased that I’ve been able to connect with my research almost daily.

How about you? If you’re participating in the challenge, please let everyone know in the comments how your month is going.

September went by so quickly and, according to my research log, I  researched only about six times. So I’m declaring a 30 x 30 challenge for October 2021. I need the accountability of publicly committing to 30 minutes of genealogy research a day for 30 days in a row. I have a crazy work day on October 1. So I’m going to start on October 2 and finish on Halloween.

It might be a bit challenging because in October I’ll be traveling to visit my father, brother and aunt in Walla Walla, Washington. But I find that being with family always reminds me of my genealogy research, so I should be okay.

Who would like to join me? If you’re up for the challenge, please let me know in the comments!

It’s the end of another 30 x 30 challenge! How did it go? Please use the comments to let us know how your challenge went.

I had a good month and the challenge certainly helped me prioritize genealogy research. (I’m so grateful for that!) I didn’t research every day–I missed four days total. But I was able to have a few sessions that were longer than 30 minutes, so my average was 37 minutes a day for the 30 days.

I started the month with a 20-document backlog of documents to be processed. In the first five days of the challenge, I focused on processing those documents and got the backlog down to 3. Then I found I needed to do a little more research, which added documents to the backlog, so it wasn’t until August 12 that I got my backlog completely eliminated. Then I went to town researching a particular collateral family group in my Rasco line and my backlog ballooned to as high as 32. Here we are at month’s end, and I still have 27 documents in my backlog. I hope to eliminate that by the end of September (though I’m not starting a new challenge until October).

I also spent a couple of sessions on the box of inherited documents I’m working on. All in all, it was a fun month combining new research with processing the documents from prior sessions. Doing daily research is so helpful to me and I hope to stick with it in the coming month!

How was your month? Please let us know in the comments!