Thanks a bunch Randy and Linda for the recognition. But I DEPEND on Randy’s blogging prompt to write my Sunday blog.

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It’s Saturday Night again –

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along – cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  Marcia Philbrick wrote Goal Update this week on her Heartland Genealogy blog.  Linda Stufflebean suggested this would be a good topic for SNGF.

2)  What were your 2023 genealogy goals?  How are you doing in achieving them?  [If you didn’t do goals this year, what goals would you like to achieve by the end of 2023?]

If you read my original post, you hopefully got the impression that I haven’t made much progress on my 2023 goals. This is likely due to a few issues:

• I did not write my goals as ‘Smart Goals’ which may be impacting my focus.
• Some of my goals take too much time.
• Sometimes I struggle focusing.

Looking at my goals, my lack of progress and wanting to do better during the next six months, I think I need to re-define my goals following the guidelines for Smart Goals. I think the SMART goal format will help me because my goals will become

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-Bound

All of my goals are relevant since they all relate to my genealogy research. And they are likely measurable — even if the measure is writing a blog post or updating WikiTree. They are also achievable — eventually. And it is that eventually that makes my current goals difficult to achieve since I lose focus.

To get over that ‘eventually’ hurdle that some of my goals have had, I’m going to try a practice that a fellow genealogist is using. In her case, she works on one ancestor a month. Since my original goal was to create research reports (narrative reports), I’m going to try working on one ancestral couple a week. With about 24 weeks left in the year, I should be able to work thru quite a few of my 4th great grandparents.

So my goal becomes

Work on updating my research for a 4th great grandparent couple (specific) for one week (time-bound) to create a narrative report (measurable) and a list of research questions to guide future research (measureable – relevant).

In the process of achieving this goal over the next 24 weeks, I also hope to continue achieving another ‘unwritten’ goal of mine: to post a blog post daily.

May we all achieve our 2023 goals and may our efforts help open holes in those brick walls.