Genealogy research can be done anywhere, anytime, for a few minutes, or lengthy periods of time. Of course it all depends on what resources are available to you at any given time.
Most of my working career was in academic libraries. What a perfect place for a genealogy hobbyist! Not only were print and microfilm documents available at my fingertips, but so was the internet from its infancy.
Pre-internet, lunchtimes were spent checking census microfilm, usually one reel at a time. By the time the reel was located, loaded and started scrolling through the images by the time I located the family in question I barely had time to record the informtion before having to return to work. How I wish the technology existed then to download the image to a thumbdrive. I could have got a lot more done in less time. Of course when I stayed after work, I didn't have the same restraints.
Yes, one can find many relevant records during their 15 minute break, surfing the internet in one's cubicle. Download images to a thumbdrive, cut & paste text into a word processor and save to the thumbdrive. And of course, if one ate one's lunch at said cubile, even more records can be found, saved and/or transribed.
But all this found data still needed to be incorporated into the database on the home computer, although I have been known to take my laptop to work to use on break/lunch/afterwork. But that changed when a new release of RootsMagic included "To-Go". This enabled me to synch from my home computer to a thumbdrive. All I had to carry to work was that thumbdrive and not only was I able to consult my existing tree, I could update my database on the spot! More efficient as I could then spend the evening at home surfing the internet for new records rather than entering data found earlier in the day. When I would synch the thumbddrive to the laptop, I would have to remember to copy images from the thumbdrive to the computer.
Over the years, I found a lot of relevant information in chunks of 15 minutes at a time.
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