Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #39: Gather up your learning resources

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one will help you take advantage of the learning resources you’ve downloaded. 

Gather up your learning resources

If you’re like me, you have learning resources scattered all over your hard drive. They’re so easy to acquire that they’re also easy to forget about. But you have a fighting chance of actually benefiting from them if you take the necessary time to gather up these educational materials (classes, handouts, guides, etc). A folder on your hard drive coupled with a checklist can help you stay on top of the the materials that you have acquired. Alternatively, you can store them in the cloud or in an app like Evernote. Wherever they are, the key is to put them together and schedule time to learn!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

New year, new 30 x 30 challenge

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I’m launching a new 30 x 30 challenge for the month of January. Boy, do I need it! After virtually ignoring my research since my father passed away at the end of August, I’m ready to gently return to it. I’ve started by doing a little bit each day this week and am ready to keep a commitment to doing genealogy research (or genealogy organizing) for 30 days in a row. The commitment is typically for 30 minutes a day but I’ll be happy if I average 30 minutes a day over the course of the month.

I’m going to focus on eliminating my backlog of downloaded files, taking at least one class or webinar each week, and basically getting a handle on where I am with my research.

I’ve been doing periodic 30 x 30 challenges since August of 2015 and I find they almost always help me get back on track. I found the accountability of the challenge to be really motivating.

If you’d like to join me in committing to doing daily research in January 2023, please comment below. Feel free to let everyone know what you’ll be working on (but don’t feel like you have to). In the middle of a month, I’ll have a check-in post where you can report your progress. And at the end of the month, we’ll have a wrap-up post.

January is always a good time for me to try to create beneficial habits. Not only am I excited by the 30 x 30 challenge, I’m also really excited about Yoga with Adriene’s 30-day yoga journey, which I’ve been doing every year since 2019. If you do yoga, or are curious about doing yoga, I invite you to join me in that challenge as well!

Keeping genealogy goals attainable

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I’m a big goal setter. Am I a big goal achiever? Not so much when it comes to genealogy goals. Every year I set them (and blog about them) and then I never look at them again. This year, I created a vision board (we recorded a podcast episode about that) and “Little and Often” is part of my vision board, to remind me to work on genealogy frequently.

So this year, in an effort to actually remember and attain my genealogy goals I am making them very simple. Here they are:

  • Research little and often
  • Take one genealogy webinar or class a week
  • Have no documents in my backlog on the last day of every month

Those goals feel attainable and easy to remember. I am going to have a 30 x 30 challenge for the month of January, which will help me stick with the little and often part of it. (Watch for a post about that next week.)

How about you? Do you set genealogy goals? If so, do you achieve them?

 

Who should I interview for How They Do It?

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Five years ago, I started my interview series, How They Do It, in which I ask professional genealogists and/or genealogy writers how they organize their own research. It’s sort of fallen by the wayside and I want to bring it back with gusto in 2023.

I’d love to hear from you if there are any genealogists you’d like me to ask. (And if you have a personal connection with someone, please let me know!) If you click on the link above, you can read the interviews I’ve done already.

It’s a pretty easy process: The interviews are done via email, I ask everyone the same questions (with occasional tweaking), and the interviewee is welcome to skip any questions that feel onerous or irrelevant. I ask them to submit a headshot, bio, and, ideally, a photo of their genealogy research space.

Here are the genealogists I’ve been lucky enough to interview for this series since it began on January 3, 2017 (in alphabetical order):

  • Lisa Alzo
  • Donna Cox Baker
  • Melissa Barker
  • Kenyatta D. Berry
  • Lisa Louise Cooke
  • Kitty Cooper
  • Crista Cowan
  • Amy Johnson Crow
  • Diana Elder
  • Nathan Dylan Goodwin
  • Julie Goucher
  • Michael Lacopo
  • David Allen Lambert
  • Denise May Levenick
  • Thomas MacEntee
  • Julie Miller
  • Sunny Morton
  • Gena Philibert-Ortega
  • Pat Richley-Erickson
  • Barbara Schmidt
  • Randy Seaver
  • Drew Smith
  • Megan Smolenyak
  • Diahan Southard
  • Paula Stuart-Warren
  • D. Joshua Taylor
  • Amie Bowser Tennant
  • Marion Burk Wood

I’m poised to send out interview invitations, so please help me out with any names. If you’re a pro genealogist or genealogy writer and haven’t done one of these interviews with me, please feel free to volunteer yourself!

You can put your suggestions in the comments or email me at janine@organizeyourfamilyhistory.com. Thanks!