Thursday, April 3, 2014

A Day In the Genealogy Life of "The Geneaholic"

I'm not sure if any readers are interested in how I spend my day doing genealogy, but I thought I'd try a fairly detailed journal from wakeup to bedtime (minus any really personal things...).

This was my Thursday, 3 April 2014:

6:50 AM:  Got up, had my banana, watched TV news, read the Sports section of the newspaper, and had my Cheerios.

7:40 AM:  Read my email on my iPhone.  Saved some messages to read online.

7:42 AM:  Opened Chrome, and Feedly, which loaded slowly.  Blogger loaded slowly.  Closed down Chrome.  Crap.  Restarted computer, wasted 8 minutes.  Sorted papers on my desk.

7:50 AM:  Computer restarted, Chrome opened easily, Feedly opened easily (104 posts to read), Blogger opened easily, started this post.  Opened the Best Of post to add content.  Skimmed 104 Feedly posts, read a few, clicked through on a few.  Skimmed 14 more Feedly posts.

8:25 AM:  Started on the Treasure Chest Thursday blog post.  Opened RootsMagic to find a suitable treasure.  I picked Hannah Richmond's obituary, which I had sourced and transcribed earlier in my Research Notes.  Posted it on Genea-Musings as Treasure Chest Thursday - Post 208: Hannah (Rich) Richmond 1911 Obituary.

8:50 AM:  Opened Gmail to read the messages saved earlier, and answered two emails.

9:00 AM:  Started a new blog post on Mocavo searches based on an email from Mocavo staff providing answers to my questions.

9:30 AM:  Quickly checked Gmail.  Checked Spam and Trash folders too (once a day at least).

9:35 AM:  Logged out of Blogger as Randy and logged into the CVGS Google account so I could write three posts, including CVGS Saturday Workshop on "New York Research" on 5 April at Bonita and CVGS Spring Seminar Review - Jean and Butch Hibben on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe.

11:15 AM:  Logged out of the CVGS account and logged into my Google account, and checked email.  Edited the Mocavo blog post just in time and posted it Working With the Mocavo Sliders - Post 2: Answers to My Questions.

11:35 AM:  Read/skimmed 57 Feedly blog posts.  Added to the Best Of post for Sunday.

11:55 AM:  Went in to the family room for lunch (vegetable beef soup, handful of crackers, chocolate pudding cup).  Put trash cans away, turned sprinkler system on again (I had turned it off during the rains on Tuesday).

12:20 PM:  Worked on the handout for the Saturday workshop - links for New York Research.  Found some new resources.  

1:40 PM:  Checked email.  Tweeted links to the 3-2-1 CITE! Challenge and Treasure Chest Thursday posts, tweets go to Facebook, copied then to Google+ also.  

1:45 PM:  Looking for something to blog about on Genea-Musings.  Checked my email files, found and wrote Dear Randy: What Do You Do With Wrong Information?

2:20 PM:  Read/skimmed 37 blog posts on Feedly.  

2:35 PM:  Started watching the "7 Highly Frugal Habits of Genealogists" by Thomas MacEntee on FamilyTreeWebinars.com.   Read Gmail and skimmed 13 more blog posts on Feedly while Thomas talked.  Also collected some of the handouts from the SDGS site in the Members section.  Checked the SDGS affiliate discounts, and checked Facebook too.

3:55 PM:  Started working on the CVGS Newsletter for April 2014.  Copied the template, edited it, and started adding content.  Got about 30% done by 5 p.m.

5 PM:   Went onto the family room to eat dinner (ham, corn on the cob, grapes, berries, Dove bar), watch TV news, read the paper, wash the dishes, and take a 10 minute power walk down the block and back.

6:20 PM:  Checked Gmail.  Started work on the 52 Ancestors post for Friday, featuring Hannah (Rich) Richman/Richmond.  I usually do these posts Thursday night because they take some time to finish, although I've done a lot of the writing and sourcing in earlier weeks.  

7:10 PM:  Read/skimmed 41 blog posts in Feedly.

7:30 PM;  Back into the CVGS Newsletter writing/editing.  Got it about 90% done tonight, will save the rest for the next two nights.  Rewarded myself with 15 minutes on Facebook.

8:30 PM:  Used the MyHeritage Record Matches for Find A Grave to add content and sources to the RootsMagic database.  Confirmed 20 matches, bringing the total down to 48 not reviewed yet and 2690 either confirmed or rejected.  Added about 75 source citations to the database.

9:45 PM:  Checked email, then Facebook, and then skimmed 20 more blog posts on Feedly.  

10 PM:  Started the daily post on The Geneaholic - My Geneaholic Day - Thursday, 3 April 2014.  Finished it quickly.

10:20 PM:  Closed RootsMagic, backed it up, and copied the file to Dropbox.  Checked some of my political sites, and went into the family room to read my Brad Thor spy book and watch the sports report on the news.

11 PM:  Off to bed after about 12.0 hours of genealogy work today.  This was a fun day - 273 blog posts read on Feedly,  9 blog posts written (counting this one, and two not yet posted), lots of variety, some tasks accomplished, and some education too.  I knew it would be busy and long, but that's almost a typical day here in the genealogy cave when I don't have to go out and there are no Padres or Chargers or Aztecs games on TV.  

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/04/a-day-in-genealogy-life-of-geneaholic.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver



5 comments:

Rebecca DeMarino said...

Love this post - you earn that title well!

Colleen G. Brown Pasquale said...

Wow. I not longer think I spend too much time on genealogy. ha!

Michigan Girl said...

Well, Randy, you've answered my burning question "how does he do all that he does?" I have always wondered and been in complete awe of your accomplishments.
Now I know. Like Colleen said, I too will no longer think I spend too much time on genealogy and my blog.
You're an inspiration.

Diane

Melissa Barker said...

Randy, love this post! I have been following you for years now and I am always impressed by your "play by play" of your day. I have contemplated keeping track of my daily activities. So, I have a couple of questions. Do you log each activity as it is completed or do you sit down at the end of the day and do it? And Why do you keep a log of your activities? Is it just for fun or do you have specific reasons why you do this and how does it help you? Did you just start doing this when you started genealogy or have you always kept a daily log of your life activities? Sorry for the many questions, I am truly interested.

Randy Seaver said...

Melissa, i'll try to answer your questions;

1) I do the log at the end of the day on the Geneaholic blog. I don't log it after every task. For this blog post, I made the entry time when I started the task and wrote it up before the next task. I often use the "History" list of websites to help me remember what I did in approximate time frames. I used to list times for each task too, but I jump around a lot.

2) Why? Because I forget what I've done after a day or two. It's a genealogy journal and a way to track my progress in adding content and sources to my RootsMagic database.

3) It helps me remember what I've done. And semi-fun. I can search the blog for keywords or labels to find a specific task.

4) I started doing the journal before I was in the ProGen course back in what, 2009? Yikes! One of the tasks was to account for the time on each task.

5) I've always wanted to keep a journal and an online journal is one way. It takes some discipline to do it every day (I skip days when I don't do much or we are out of town or have the grandkids.