Thursday, September 3, 2009

My Daily Genealogy Routine

Lately over at GeneaBloggers, I've been working with Gini Webb (of the Ginisology blog) on the "May I Introduce To You . . ." series of posts. This has been an enjoyable experience for me since it not only allows me to get other genealogy bloggers to create content at GeneaBloggers, but I also get to know Gini a bit more with each e-mail sent back and forth.

In one email we discussed our "routines" especially when it comes to reading genealogy blog posts, checking emails etc. It got me to thinking that I should write down the routine and perhaps see if it needs tweaking:

1. Create a post on GeneaBloggers to that day’s Daily Blogging Theme – so today I had to make sure a post for Treasure Chest Thursday was created.

2. Check the national news and Chicago Tribune since I am a news junkie. Also see who died (I know I am not the only one who does this . . .).

3. Check email – usually about 50 new emails overnight.

4. Coffee is ready.

5. Go to Google Reader and quickly tag the posts that match the Daily Blogging Theme – like Treasure Chest Thursday. I know it is important for people to see their post appear on the widget so I try to do this several times a day.

6. Go through all 200 tweets on Twitter using TweetDeck – check out links and sites tweeted. Respond to Direct Message tweets. Retweet the messages I think have value.

7. Go through Google Reader posts under the GeneaBloggers account – usually 100 posts for the 570 genealogy blogs I follow.

8. Sign in as tmacentee and go through Google Reader posts – mostly technical blogs.

9. Add new geneablogs for requests I’ve received. This entails adding the blog subscription to Google Reader, adding the URL to the Google Custom Search, and adding an entry to the current New Geneablogs document in Google Documents. This will allow me to copy and paste the text for Saturday's post highlighting new genealogy blogs.

10. All those links I opened need to go into my Evernote notebooks so I can review and write later. I love Evernote and I even ponied up for the premium service. It allows me to copy and paste files, entire web pages and more into notebook pages that I can access later on from any computer.

11. Work on upcoming posts including research, creating outlines, etc.

12. Work on upcoming presentations.

13. Work on my upcoming book about genealogy and blogging.

14. Take a look at my genealogy databases. Work on cleaning up source citations. Check in on my To Do list for research.

15. Scan any photos and documents that have been received.

That's it. Some days are better than others, of course. And in case you are wondering, there are days when I don't get past #6 or #7 on my list!

Do you have a genealogy routine? Is it different for different days or on the weekend/vacation?

1 comment:

Gini said...

Thomas I think this is a perfect subject that many will be interested in, I know that I am. Just when I don't know how I am going to keep up, you help me and things fall into place! I have learned so much from you, thank you for all that you do for us.

I am very interested in learning how others keep up. Thank you for a great post.