Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

30 x 30 challenge: mid-month check-in

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It’s the 15th of the month! How’s your 30 x 30 challenge going? I was so pleased with the challenge’s participation this month and hope that it’s going well for you. Please let us know in the comments whether you’ve been able to get some time in and whether the challenge has been beneficial.

I haven’t actually been putting much time in on my genealogy organizing but I have been getting some small organizing tasks done around my apartment, which feels very good. (I blogged about them on my organizing blog…you can check those posts out here, if you’d like.)

I look forward to reading about your progress!

Time for a 30 x 30 challenge for the new year!

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It’s been a minute since I’ve hosted a 30 x 30 challenge, but the new year is always a great time (in my opinion) to challenge yourself with new habits and routines. So what do you say? Would you like to commit to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research (or genealogy organizing or really anything) for 30 days in a row? You’re welcome to modify the challenge so that it suits you.

I’ve been doing periodic 30 x 30 challenges for almost a decade now (here’s the first one) and I’ve found it to be really beneficial in putting my research top of mind. Back in 2017 I wrote this post about the value of daily research.

So if you’d like to take the challenge, let me know in the comments. I’ll do a mid-month check in and an end-of-the month wrap up post. I’m still working on digitizingmy paper genealogy files (I have less file space now that I’m an apartment dweller). I hope to make some real progress in January!

Quick Tip #45: Have a genealogy email address

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one could turn into a time saver!

Create an email address for genealogy

Keeping track of email is a challenge for the best of us. (You do not want to see how many emails I have in my inbox right now!) One way you can make genealogy life a little easier is to create a dedicated email address specifically for emails related to your research. So if you are reaching out to cousins, repositories, or DNA matches you send your inquiries from that address and use that address on any contact forms. How you create a new email address and filter the responses depends on your email client, so I won’t go into that here. I just want to plant the seed that having an email address dedicated to genealogy might make your life a little bit easier!.

September 30 x 30 challenge wrap up

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It’s the end of September! It feels like a long month, if I’m being honest. I’m curious to know how your 30 x 30 challenge went, if you chose to participate. Were you able to do 30 minutes of genealogy research (or organizing or whatever you committed to) every day?

My goal had been to go through my paper genealogy files and weed them out. I got off to a pretty good start but my efforts started to peter out as other priorities emerged. I really do want to get this project done by the end the year–I don’t have space for these files since we’ve moved! The good news is that I shifted my focus to getting caught up on my business’s Quickbooks entry and was able to give that daily attention. And that felt great. I’m almost caught up and I plan to stay caught up now that life is a little more back to normal.

How about you? Please let us know in the comments how your 30 x 30 challenge went and whether it was helpful!

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.