Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

June 30 x 30 wrap-up

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Now that the June 30 x 30 challenge is in the rear view mirror, it’s time to report in. How did it go? Were you able to research or organize every day this month? And did you get in 15 hours?

I’ve definitely had better months. I saw the handwriting on the wall mid-month and relaxed my goal to a total of four hours for the last two weeks. I did manage to achieve that, I believe. I tried hard to do a little something every day, and I probably did some research ten out of the last 14 days. I did have a couple of long sessions, so I got in those four hours.

My current project is processing the documents I found in my father’s and aunt’s homes. I did the initial sort when the boxes arrived, so all I have to do now is go to the file containing the ten items I’d selected to act on and pick one or more to enter into my Reunion database. I think I’ve emptied and refilled the action file three times now, so I’ve plowed through at least 30 documents.

Having the challenge definitely helped me get more done than I otherwise would have in a crazy busy month. I’m glad I did it! I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to devote more time to research during the next 30 x 30 challenge, which will be in August or September. And I do plan to try to get some research done in July as well.

If you participated in this challenge (or even if you didn’t), please let us know in the comments how your research month was!

Quick Tip #36: Do it now!

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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 helps keep my backlog lean.

Do it now!

It is so easy to let a backlog of documents to be processed pile up. If you’re researching online and you download a document, it’s very tempting to move on to the next document to download, rather than processing the one you just found. (I process documents by extracting the facts from a document, entering them into my database on Reunion and creating a source citation that is used for each fact.) Way too often, I just download willy nilly without processing and the result is a backlog of documents to be processed that sometimes weigh me down. If we don’t extract the data from the documents we find, they’re not benefiting us.

So here’s my advice, when you’re doing online research, I encourage you to build time into your research session to process the documents that you find in that session. Either do it right after downloading or process all documents found in that session at the end of the session. This way, you’ll keep your backlog to a minimum and potentially valuable documents won’t languish in your backlog.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

June 30 x 30 challenge mid-month check in!

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It’s the middle of our 30 x 30 challenge. How’s it going? I started out with a bang but haven’t been able to prioritize daily research, unfortunately, in the last week or so. I researched daily the first week, but only twice the second.

I’ve decided to I’m cut myself some slack, rather than throw in the towel. I have a really busy client week coming up and that will make it hard to research every day for 30 minutes. So I’ve shifted my goal for the rest of the month to researching for a total of four hours.

How about you? If you joined the challenge, please let us know in the comments how you’re doing with it!

Join me for a June 30 x 30 challenge?

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May was brutal for me in terms of being able to do genealogy research. I had so many family obligations (among my living family members) that I couldn’t pay any attention to my deceased family members! But I really want to get some family history exploration done this month, so I’m having a 30 x 30 challenge. In addition to reacquainting myself with my family tree, I hope to be sifting through the boxes I sent myself last month from my father’s and aunt’s homes after they moved. In June, I plan to focus on the documents, putting the photos aside for later.

How about you? Would you like to join me for a 30 x 30 challenge? I am committing to spending an average of 30 minutes a day for the next 30 days on genealogy research and organizing. I want to at least something each day (even if it’s not a full 30 minutes) because I find daily effort so valuable in getting back into the swing of things. I’ll be keeping a spreadsheet and I’ll be really happy if I log 900 minutes (15 hours) over the course of the month. Actually, I’ll be happy if I do something every day, even if it doesn’t add up to 15 hours.

If you’d like in on the challenge, just say so in the comments. Mid-month, I’ll post an update post on my progress and invite you to share yours.