Finding Time for Family History

We’re almost through the month and did you make plans to spend more time on your family history… and have you?

That’s the thing with time, it can quickly get away on you.

In the Plan to Publish - Your Family History programme, 01 Plan was the first step in working towards publication of our family history. However one thing we didn’t discuss this month was planning your time. If one of your goals for the year was to take some of your research from notes to publication then you need time to do this.

If you play a sport then you make time to play sport, including attending practices as well as competing. If you sign up to a night class, you make time to go to the night class. The thing with family history is often you don’t have to leave the house to actually work on it and so it’s easy to get distracted with other things around the home.

So why not think of your family history time as if you were attending a class. Will it be a daytime class or a night time class? What weekday suits or is the weekend better? A night class is usually a couple of hours, can you put aside a couple of hours once a week or do you need to break it down into a couple of bites of time? Don’t forget night classes are only in term time, so you can have holidays.

Then there’s the interruptions. If you “attend” class at home will you be interrupted? Can you escape to a room with all your family history material or would it be easier to head to the library or coffee shop?

The great thing about classes is they can also have field trips, so maybe take your session to a library or coffee shop, or even to the home of a friend who likes family history. Then you can both work on your family history together.

We run “Your Place” workshops in Christchurch, where a small group of family history enthusiasts meet every couple of months for a morning of working on our family trees and mentoring one on one with a tutor. We've also had Your Place Workshops on DNA, Memories and Organising Your Photos. Contact us if you are interested in finding out more.

If you’re not in Christchurch but you’re interested in a Your Place workshop at Your Place then why not contact us about hosting a virtual Your Place workshop.

But right now, get your calendar out and plan your family history time. Tell the family that you are going to your family history class and make some time just for you and the ancestors.