Randy Seaver’s latest Saturday Night Genealogy Fun blog post takes a look at how you handle your time.  What is funny is that this ties in well with the latest topic of my ProGen Study Group assignments.  I took my time and figured out what my monthly genealogy commitments include… and used Microsoft Excel to create a pie chart of the time.

As you can see my biggest time commitments in genealogy are Education and The In-Depth Genealogist!

The In-Depth Genealogist 48%
Education 24%
Client Research 4%
Family Research 4%
Writing for Publication 4%
Social Media 4%
Presentations 4%
Family Tree Designs 4%
Volunteering 4%

In order to balance all of these commitments I review my time each month to determine my priorities and how I will accomplish everything. Recently, I determined that on a weekly basis I have roughly 26 hours available for genealogy work (beyond the time I spend with my family and at work). This means that each month I have roughly 104 hours for my genealogy pursuits. On a weekly basis I have updated a spreadsheet with a breakdown of hours worked and on which task. This becomes handy to determine how much the monthly commitments often require.

In my engineering work I have used Microsoft Project to plan out large engineering projects with many tasks. This is good for large projects, but not necessarily helpful for ongoing task assignments. Through my work with The In-Depth Genealogist I have begun to use Teambox to keep myself organized and on task. Deadlines scheduled in Teambox are added to my Google calendar automatically and are removed when they are accomplished.

I noticed on Randy’s post he mentioned some ideal time spent for his categories.  Here’s mine:

The In-Depth Genealogist 25%
Education 20%
Client Research 20%
Family Research 10%
Writing for Publication 5%
Social Media 5%
Presentations 5%
Family Tree Designs 5%
Volunteering 5%

Now I just need to figure out a way to work more efficiently on the magazine for IDG so I re-proportion some of that time!