Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

My moratorium on new information

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stoplightI love attending genealogy conferences and learning about new opportunities to learn more about my ancestors. I sat in on some of the National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair and learned about new-to-me records I might explore for information on my ancestors. I got really excited about the possibilities. And then I was struck by revelation:

I will benefit more from processing the information I’ve already found than from seeking out new information.

I’m speaking personally, of course. For me, I think one way I can avoid being blindsided by overwhelm in my research is by focusing on the (not-unsubstantial) documents I’ve already found. I want to examine and evaluate them, keeping track of the clues contained in them and taking note of new avenues of research. I’ll keep a list of these next steps and I’ll try very hard not to explore them until I’ve caught up with what I have on hand. If I just keep gathering new documents without taking the time to analyze and benefit from them, I’ll constantly feel behind. That’s not how I want to feel about my genealogy research!

I’ve done a pretty good job of collecting military and pension files for some of my ancestors. I’m going to make processing them a priority. So far, here’s what I have:

  • Three Union Civil War pension files, which are various stage of processing, from almost complete to barely started
  • One Confederate Civil War pension file I have (from the Alabama archives)
  • A Civil War Compiled Service Record for one ancestor I downloaded years ago that I didn’t do much with
  • A newly acquired military record for my great grandfather’s service in the Philippine Insurrection

In addition to processing those documents, I’d like to continue systematically checking my source documentation.

If I focus on these resources I’ve already gathered through the end of the year, I feel like I can start 2017 with a sense of accomplishment and a fabulous to-do list of things to research. So much of the fun of genealogy research is the thrill of the hunt. But if I take the time to analyze the clues I find, the hunt will be even more thrilling.

Photo by walknboston via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Are there loose documents on your hard drive?

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beachballI had to reinstall the operating system on my MacBook last week. (I paid someone to do it for me.) If you’re interested, you can read  some details about that in this blog post on my organizing blog. As a result, I spent some time focusing on the contents of the Documents folder of my hard drive before the big day.

I thought my genealogy documents were quite well organized on my hard drive. (I organize my documents in a Genealogy folder and Surname subfolder, by surname, then person.) Turns out, they weren’t quite as well organized as I thought. I was surprised to see that I had all sorts of loose files, some of them properly named, others with gibberish image names, floating around on my hard drive. Many were in my Downloads folder. Some were in the Genealogy folder. There are probably more elsewhere that I haven’t yet found.

It was actually quite a boon. Many of them I had not processed into my Reunion software. Some offered clues and insights. And it feels so much better to know things actually are well organized. (Or at least to have the illusion they are.)

If you download documents from Ancestry or elsewhere or if you scan documents into your computer, it might be worth 15 minutes to poke around your hard drive and see if there are any stray documents that didn’t make it into the proper folder!

Early-bird registration for RootsTech 2017 about to expire

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rootstech2017If you’re planning to attend RootsTech 2017, the giant conference where genealogy meets technology, now’s the time to register. Until Friday, you can get the early-bird discount of $159 for the four-day conference registration. It’s being held February 8-11, 2017 in Salt Lake City. To me, $159 is a huge bargain (but then again, I routinely pay $600 or $700 to register for conferences for professional organizers).

Here’s the link to register. Before you register, you can browse the class selection and see which of the over 200 breakout sessions appeal to you. The keynote speakers haven’t been announced yet, but in the years I’ve attended there have been some big names, like Laura Bush, Ree Drummond and Donny Osmond.  The expo hall is huge.

This will be my third year attending RootsTech. I missed last year and I’m anxious to go back. I go to a good number of genealogy conferences, both large and small. RootsTech is special to me for a few reasons:

  • The huge number of genealogy enthusiasts who attend (there have been more than 10,000 attending the years I’ve gone)
  • The vast selection of excellent learning opportunities, between the keynotes and the breakout sessions
  • The fact that it’s helpful to beginners and advanced genealogists alike
  • The access to all the latest genealogy products at the expo hall
  • There’s musical entertainment (this year it’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing music of Rogers and Hammerstein)
  • How well organized it is (amazingly well organized)

I’m particularly excited this year because I’m co-presenting one of the sessions (Go Paperless: Digitize and Streamline Your Research). So if you’re attending, please let me know. I’d love to meet you and even see your friendly face in the audience!

The registration prices goes up to $189 on Friday, October 14. (I’m not clear what time that happens, but to be safe, I’d suggest registering today or tomorrow.)

Keeping my focus

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focusFrom the day I started doing genealogy research, I was overwhelmed by the possibilities. There were so many things to research, in so many places. Where do I start? How do I keep track of it all? How do I keep from going down a rabbit hole and losing track of my session goals? Sometimes I’d feel so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even start researching and I’d do something else.

Honestly, that feeling of overwhelm has been my overarching challenge all along. It’s why I started this blog, to try to help myself and others get past it. (That’s why my tag line is “Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots.”)

More than a dozen years into this hobby, I finally feeling like I’m getting past overwhelm. I’m happy to say that I’ve developed some strategies that are making me feel more focused and productive. Those feelings in turn help me enjoy doing the work more and consequently I stay motivated to do more research. It’s such a nice feeling that I thought I’d share with you what I’m doing, in the hopes that it might help you.

  1. I have a default project. Right now (and for the past few months and for at least the next few months) I’m systematically going through my sources from Reunion 11 (my family tree software). I’m up to Source 57 out of a current 380. Each session, I start with the next source on the list and I make sure I’ve thoroughly examined it, entered all the data found in it, followed up (or made a note of) clues contained within it, and attached an image as a multimedia file to the source. Oh and I make sure it’s reasonably well cited. So far I’ve seen lots of room for improvement when examining each source, so a single source might take as much as an hour to go through. Sometimes I can get a few sources done per session. The process has kept me very focused. Even so,  I often stumble upon new information and if I have time I’ll sometimes go off on a tangent for a bit. But because I’m checking off the sources one by one, I have a place to come back to.
  2. I have a goal for each session. When I sit down to research I ask myself, as I always have, what will I work on today? It’s the answer to that question that’s the key. If you know what you want to find out, you know where to start and you know where to end. If you have a goal in mind, you can bring yourself back to it if you find yourself heading down that rabbit hole. Knowing what you want to work on is everything. I can work on my sources project. Or I can work on something else, if I want. I just like knowing what I’m after today.
  3. I keep track of clues. In Evernote, I keep a list of clues and of things to explore. That helps me stay focused on my goal without worrying that I’ll forget about this tantalizing tidbit I’ve come across. Some days I don’t feel like going back to documenting my sources. Instead I start at my clue list.
  4. I write down next steps. At the end of any session, I make a note of next steps so I can pick up where I left off. Sometimes I’ll even set a reminder in Evernote so I can get excited first thing in the morning by the day’s new challenge. (I’m trying to put in at least a little research every morning.) This allows me to stop a session because  I know I can pick up the thread. And it allows me to start the next session because I know what I’m going to be working on. (And I’m usually anxious to get to it!)

One thing I know about myself is that I do better with fewer choices. So this approach has really helped get past the paralysis that too much choice can bring.  A year ago, I heard D. Joshua Taylor speak at the annual conference of the Genealogical Society of Southern Illinois. One of his talks was on time management and he was all about staying focused. Every now and then I read my summary of his time-management wisdom to remind me of the importance of focus.

What about you? Do you have any tips or tricks for staying focused that you’d like to share?

Photo by Mark Hunter via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.