I am so ready for a new 30 x 30 challenge in which I commit to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research for the 30 days of June. Ordinarily, I would declare a 30 x 30 challenge closer to the first of the month, but since it’s the start of Memorial Day weekend, I thought you might want to plan ahead. Let me know in the comments if you’d like to join in on the challenge!

I had a really successful 30 x 30 in April and I had a great start in May, but once I started traveling on May 11 (I went to Walla Walla, Washington, to visit my dad), I fell off the wagon and I haven’t researched since. Having a challenge going is enough for me to elevate genealogy research on my daily task list.

I find that when I research daily–even if only for a few minutes–I stay in touch with my research and researching is easier. (I wrote a post about the value of daily research a few years ago.) Because my time is limited, I tend to set a timer for 30 minutes to keep me from getting lost in the research. (I dream of the day I’m retired and can research all day if I want!)

I’m looking forward to getting back to daily research. I hope you’ll join me!

 

It’s the last day of April and the last day of this month’s 30 x 30 challenge, in which we tried to do 30 minutes of genealogy-related activity every day for 30 days. If you participated, please share: how did it go?

I had an extraordinarily good month. Perhaps because I was so focused on genealogy as I was getting my new guide ready to to publish next week, I actually worked on my genealogy research every single day! I averaged 30 minutes a day (33 minutes 34 seconds, to be precise) for the month, though some sessions were as short as five minutes.

My goal this month was to get through my backlog of unprocessed documents. I came so close! I started the month with 112 documents in my backlog and I now have 10. And those I think I can knock out by Monday. One of the reasons I was able to do it was my vow not to add to my backlog by downloading more documents. I did download nine documents over the course of the month, but they were necessary in order to make connections that allowed me to process the documents in my backlog. I kept a follow up note in my research log for clues to follow up on after this challenge is over, which helped a lot.

I kept a spreadsheet (in Numbers on my Mac), which I found very motivating. It allowed me to see how close I was getting to my goal of eliminating my backlog and my goal of spending an average of 30 minutes a day researching. Here’s a screenshot, in case it’s of interest. (Click on it to make it larger.)

The spreadsheet really illustrates how you can chip away at a backlog little by little. I intend to process the remaining 10 documents in my backlog and I’m going to try hard to process documents the same session I download them so I don’t build up another backlog.

I’m feeling great about my month and I hope you are too! Please let me know in the comments how your challenge went and whether you found it beneficial.

It’s that time again! I need a 30 x 30 challenge so badly because I barely got any genealogy research done in March. I love how a 30 x 30 challenge vaults research to the top of my daily task list.

Who would like to join me in committing to doing at 30 minutes of research a day for 30 days? (You’re welcome to customize the challenge in any way…it’s your challenge.) We’ll start on April 1.

In February’s challenge, I worked on checking the sources in my source documentation list and in the process added significantly to my backlog of documents to be processed. So this month, I’m going to focus on reducing that backlog. And I’m committing to process any new documents during the session I download them (because sometimes you have to do a little clarifying research when you’re busting the backlog). As I have in the past, I’ll keep a spreadsheet of my progress, so I can feel good about it (and, I hope, not feel overwhelmed).

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to join me! I’ll be posting a mid-month and end-of-the-month check in where we can share how it’s going. Here’s to a great month of research!