Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

August 30 x 30 wrap up: How’d it go?

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Our August 30 x 30 challenge is over and I’d love to hear how it went for you. Were you able to do genealogy research for 30 minutes a day? If not, did the challenge prompt you get more done than you might otherwise have? Do you have any achievements to share?

I had a great month. I researched every day, though I didn’t always do the full 30 minutes. This month I kept a spreadsheet of my daily progress on reducing my backlog of downloaded documents that need to be processed. One of the fields in that spreadsheet is how much time I spent each session. The Numbers spreadsheet understands minutes and hours so I can easily glance at the sum for that column and see that I spent 17 hours and 20 minutes researching in August (including 20 minutes yesterday, which is technically past the 30-day challenge). That’s an average of 33 minutes and 32 seconds a day. That feels great!!

The bad news is that I only reduced my backlog by 24 documents, which is kind of sad. Mostly that’s because I downloaded 40 documents in August, despite my pledge that I would resist downloading. So that means I processed 64 documents, which doesn’t sound quite as pathetic.

In any case, I enjoyed this month’s research and, as always, felt I benefited from doing it daily. I love the connection I maintain with my research when I work on it daily.

How about you? If you participated in the challenge, please let us know how this month went!

30 x 30: Time for a mid-month check in!

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For those of you who are participating in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge (in which we endeavor to do 30 minutes of genealogy research every day for 30 days), how’s it going? It’s almost halfway through the month. Have you found that the challenge is prompting to you to get more research (or organizing) done than you might have otherwise?

I’ve had a great couple of weeks. I’ve researched every day. A couple of those sessions were shorter than 30 minutes. One was about five minutes, just so I wouldn’t break the chain of daily research. This month I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of my efforts at reducing my backlog and I included a column on how much time I spent. So I can tell you that in 13 days , I have spent 6 hours and 45 minutes researching. (I think it’s very cool that Numbers allows me to enter minutes then totals it up for me in hours.) That’s an average of 31 minutes a day. Woot!

I have been focusing on eliminating my backlog of unprocessed documents, though it’s going more slowly than I might have hoped. I have so far reduced the backlog by 24 documents. I’m finding that the processing is revealing questions and mysteries that are diverting me a little. But I have added only three new documents in the last two weeks! In any case, this slow and steady approach has been enjoyable. And the short, daily sessions is keeping me in touch with my research, which is always a great benefit.

I am confident that I would not have prioritized research if it weren’t for the challenge. I am so grateful to all of you for providing me with accountability.

Your turn: If you’re among the 30 or so folks who signed on to the challenge (or even you didn’t sign on but are participating), please let the rest of us know how it’s going!

August 30 x 30 challenge: Who’s with me?

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I’m in dire need of a new 30 x 30 challenge. I was able to prioritize genealogy research during the June 30 x 30 challenge, but in July, without the accountability of the challenge, I think I did genealogy fewer than half the days.

The COVID crisis is escalating here in Missouri and I’m staying in more than ever. So it seems to me that August is the perfect time for a new 30 x 30 challenge. In August, I hope to get rid of my backlog of unprocessed downloaded documents or at least make a huge dent in it. I’m going to try to be really focused on that. And I vow that if I do download new documents, I will process them the same session I download them.

Are you interested in joining me in committing to doing 30 minutes of genealogy research (or organizing or whatever else you want to do) for 30 days? If so, please post a comment!

Time for me to address my backlog

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I hate it when I let a backlog of downloaded files build up. I know that downloading a file without gleaning the facts from it and adding it to my genealogy software does not further my research. And yet I struggle with backlogs. My most recent post on my struggle was in October 2018. That fall, I vowed to eliminate my backlog and I succeeded in doing it, sort of. I took a group of deeds I couldn’t face and moved them to a foldern unprocessed. But otherwise, I processed 79 downloaded documents by making backlog-busting my research focus.

Well, the backlog has built up again and it’s time to address it. I have 78 documents languishing in my Surnames folder, waiting to be processed and filed in their appropriate folders. I plan to announce an August 30 x 30 challenge next week and my focus in August will be to get rid of that backlog. Two years ago, I created a spreadsheet in which I kept a running tally of the numbers of files I needed to process. I found updating it every session to be quite rewarding. So I think I’ll employ that strategy again.

One reason for my large backlog is that I went on a sprint of newspaper research in June and July. I had a seven-day free trial of newspapers.com and then bought a 30-day subscription that expired July 22. I found myself downloading, but not necessarily processing, a bunch of newspaper articles. (I did process some of them, though!)

In organizing, we refer to this as backsliding. I know how to process documents. I actually enjoy processing documents. But when I let a backlog build up it quickly gets overwhelming and less enjoyable. I find that focusing on the backlog to get it back to zero brings me great peace of mind.

In order to succeed at getting rid of my backlog, I know I have to avoid downloading any new documents while I’m focused on the backlog. Any documents I do download, I must commit to processing in the same research session. That way the number of documents left to process goes down every day. (Come to think about it, that’s not unlike dealing with physical clutter, credit card debt or any number of other scenarios!)

I bet I’m not the only one dealing with a backlog of genealogy documents (either digital or paper) that have been collected but not dealt with. If you have a backlog, feel free to join me in backlog busting in August!