Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Carving out time for your genealogy research

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Ticking clockBack in 2015, I published this post, which I originally published on another of my three blogs, the one on my organizing business’s website, Peace of Mind Organizing. These days I’m trying to blog once a week on each of my blogs. (The third is the blog on my budget coaching website, Peace of Mind Budgeting.) The focuses of the blogs are separate, but occasionally a post written for one can transfer right over to the other.

That’s the case with this post. When perusing my business blog, I realized that a post called Finding time to feed your soul, originally published in 2014, would be great on this blog. So here it is. I hope you find it helpful!

I love doing genealogy research. It’s a fairly big part of my life—I blog twice weekly (most weeks) at my genealogy blog, Organize Your Family History, so I actually think about my family research quite a lot.

But I don’t actually research as often as I’d like. And that’s a shame, because researching my family history feeds my soul.

We’re all busy with the daily activities of life. Throw kids, aging parents, demanding work, needy spouses or sick pets into the mix and sometimes it feels like we don’t have any time to do those things that really nourish us.

I believe that doing those things is really important for self care. So how can we find the time?

Time management is all about managing priorities. If you put everyone’s needs before your own, all you’ll be doing is putting out fires. And that’s not good for you. So I think it’s important to figure out little pockets of time that you can set aside as “me time.” During that special time, you can do that thing that keeps you going and that feeds your soul.

How can you find some pockets of time when you’re already so busy?

  • Get up a half hour early to feed your soul
  • Drop an activity that you’re doing because you think you should, not because you want to
  • If you’re a TV watcher, have a no-TV day each week and put that time toward your desired activity
  • Find people who also do what you want to do (like a knitting group) and agree to do that activity together.
  • Block off time on your calendar for your soul-feeding activity
  • Explain to your family your need to have to time of your own and arrange for a redistribution of chores

The list could go on. Perhaps you just need to be a little creative.

If you’re saying to yourself, I can’t take time out for myself while my house is messy…that’ll have to wait until I get organized then please stop. It breaks my heart when people stop their messy homes from allowing them to live. Sure, work on your home, bit by bit (or hire someone to help you), but reward your efforts with some soul-nourishing activity.

Our lives our important and they should be as happy and fulfilling as possible. I’m a firm believer that we can take control of our time and do those things that bring fulfillment.

Can you make some time for yourself this weekend?

Photo by R.L. Hyde via Flickr

January 2024 30 x 30 challenge wrap up

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It’s January 31 already! How was your month? Some aspects of my January were great. I participated in Yoga with Adriene’s 30-day yoga journey and did each at-home yoga practice daily without fail. And I met my goal of closing my fitness rings on my Apple Watch every day. My month was focused on health and fitness, not genealogy. So I can report a successful month.

What about your genealogy research? Did your 30 x 30 genealogy challenge go well? Were you able to meet your goals? Did you make any fun discoveries? Please share all in the comments to this post. That wraps it up for this challenge. I plan to do a new 30 x 30 challenge every two or three months, but of course you can always do one on your own!

I look forward to hearing how everything went!

January 2024 mid-month check in!

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I can’t believe it’s already January 15. It’s time to check in and let us know how your 30 x 30 challenge is going this month. Have you been able to reach your goal of daily research? If not, have you done more research than you might have done without the challenge? Please chime in in the comments and let us know how it’s going, whether you’ve made any great discoveries and/or how you’re feeling about your progress.

I’m not actually participating in this month’s challenge–I’m taking a little break from genealogy research and focusing on my health and fitness. (Nothing bad is happening, I just want to take it up a notch!) And I’ve done great with that this month. In fact, if you’re curious, you can take a look at the current issue of organizing newsletter, which I just published, which has a picture of this month’s habit tracker and all its glorious checks. And please feel free to subscribe to that newsletter, which is for people who love reading about organizing.

I can’t wait to hear how your 30 x 30 challenge is going!

New year, new 30 x 30 challenge

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Happy New Year! As I mentioned last week, daily research is so helpful. And a great way to help establish the habit of daily research is participating in a 30 x 30 challenge. For the month of January, you’ll strive to do 30 minutes of research every day for 30 days. This is your challenge and you can adapt it however you want. Maybe you want to focus on organizing your research, not doing new research. Or perhaps you want to focus on processing your backlog of downloaded documents. You may want to average 30 minutes a day for the month, not do 30 minutes a day. Whatever works for you is great. You alone measure your success.

I just want to help you focus on what’s important for your research this month. I’ve been holding these challenges periodically since 2015 and have proven to be a great jump start for lots of people.

If you’d like to participate, just say so in the comments. (I know a number of you said you’d participate in the comments for last week’s post, which is great.)

Then, in the middle of the month, I’ll create a post and ask you to report in on your progress this month. And there will be a wrap-up post at the end of the month.

Are you in? I hope it’s a great month for your research. Ready, set, go!