14 years into the project but still finding a better way to do it

 I started scanning my collection all the way back in 2009. That's 14 years ago (somehow!) but just last week I found a way to improve on it. 

For the past 10 years or so, I've scanned three pages, then edited them, then scanned 3 more, repeat repeatedly. 

It worked well for me for years, but it turns out there was a better way. 

Doing 5 pages of 9 cards works out much better for me. As I've stated in previous posts, I get tired of doing lots of consecutive pages of the same set, it will burn me out, and my mind will start to wander, I'll go check Facebook or Twitter or just look out the window instead of working on scanning/cropping. 

Doing it this way prevents that. I have figured out the best way for me is to do one full page of something, then one mixed page, then 1 full page, then another mixed page, and finish with another full page. This keeps my interest and I don't find my mind wandering. It's much more fun for me, and I find I'm actually scanning faster, likely because I'm enjoying it more and spending more time actually working on it instead of doing other things. 

These three screenshots are of the PhotoScape working area. It shows the progress I've described here. Eventually these scans will get labeled and uploaded to the Cardboard History Gallery. 

You may wonder why I changed what I've been doing for the past 10ish years? It actually was sort of a fluke. One night last week (I don't even remember which one) I was getting tired but I wasn't able to go to bed yet. (due to medical stuff I have to stay awake a certain point). I was too tired to crop any more scans- that requires being at least mostly mentally "with it" but scanning requires less mental effort. You can be half asleep and scan, believe me. So that's what I did- I scanned a bunch of pages. More than 5 but I'm not sure exactly how many. Probably closer to 20. I liked having a larger batch available and ready to crop, so I did some experiments and determined 5 pages and staggered like I explained actually works pretty much perfectly for me. Since I figured that out I've scanned and cropped almost the entire contents of a 550 count box...in roughly 3 days.

I do believe I will be doing this format going forward, because as I mentioned, it's a lot more fun for me. I wish I had thought to do it sooner, but I'm glad I stumbled across it eventually.