Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

What does success look like in 2015?

By 1 Comment

Setting genealogy goalsI’m an unabashed goal-oriented person. I don’t always achieve all my goals, but I love having something to strive for.

I’m realizing, though, that I don’t really have goals for my genealogy research. I think if I had them, I’d feel better about my progress. So before the end of this year, I intend to put together a short list of genealogy goals for 2015. I think it will help motivate me to do research when I don’t feel like I have time. And it should also keep me focused in my research.

What will my genealogy goals look like? I don’t know just yet. But the things I’m going to consider are:

  • Building my family tree up (into new generations) versus building it out (adding more collateral lines)
  • Visiting more cemeteries and/or research libraries
  • Attending conferences
  • Reaching out to cousins
  • Getting and keeping everything organized (that’s a work in progress, of course!)

While achieving goals is important to me, I believe in rewarding myself for progress, rather than results. Along those lines, I think would also be wise for me to set a goal for the amount of effort I put in. So I think I’ll include something like, “Spend at least 30 minutes twice a week” on genealogy. That could be doing research or organizing my research. Thirty minutes twice a week doesn’t sound like much, but it amounts to 52 hours over the course of a year, and 52 hours is significant!

On or before January 2, I’ll post my short list of goals here. What about you? Do you set annual goals for your genealogy research? If not, do you think you might start?

 

Organizing little by little

By 2 Comments

calendarsnippetHere’s one thing I know: Getting or keeping your family history research organized doesn’t happen without a little effort. (Of course, that’s true of organizing most aspects of our lives!) There never seems to be enough time to do genealogy research, let alone time to organize it.

But if you snatch little pockets of time to catch up on your organizing, you can make great strides. For example, 15 minutes spent on filing unfiled genealogy documents (either electronic or paper) is time well spent. It allows you to familiarize yourself with your documents and the holes you have in your research. It makes you feel more in control. You can get rid of any duplicates you come across. And, of course, it helps you find what you need when you’re looking for something, because documents are where they’re supposed to be.

One thing that can help is keeping an organizing task list so you can jump right into it when you carve out some time for it. My new genealogy to-do list helps me know what to work on when I have some time for research. But I think it’s a good idea to spend some time at least once a week organizing the research. Toward that end, I think that in addition to having a genealogy to-do list for each branch of my family, I’ll make one for organizing tasks. That’ll make it easier for me to just do something. (I’ll be posting a Genealogy To-Do List printable very soon so you can use my form, if you’d like.)

So here’s my challenge for you today: Think about how often you want to do family history research. And then think about when you might work on organizing your research. In this last month of the year, maybe you can carve out a little time for organizing. Doing it little by little, you’ll make progress. If you wait for a free weekend when you feel like organizing, you may never get it done.

Like many people, I have a very busy December coming up. But I’ve found that I get more done when I’m really busy. So for this December, I’m going to commit to spending at least a half hour a week organizing my genealogy research. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up two hours over the course of the month (actually, two and a half, since December started on a Monday this year). And one can get a lot done in two focused hours. To set myself up for success, I’ve scheduled five half-hour sessions on my calendar.

I’ll try to keep track of what I accomplish in that time and at the end of the month, I’ll post my progress here. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by all I can get done in those little, focused pockets of time.

 

Figuring out how you’re related

By 10 Comments

How are you related?A lot of people, even some genealogy enthusiasts, can get confused about how they’re related to extended relatives. Last week, the popular website Lifehacker posted an article called “Second Cousins” “Once Removed”, and more Explained in Chart.

My husband, Barry, and I were discussing that article at dinner and he said he didn’t understand why such a complicated chart and long article was necessary. “It’s very simple to figure out,” he said.

“Show me,” I replied. (I live in Missouri, after all.)

So he did. And it was simple.

Herewith, Barry’s method for figuring out how you’re related to someone. There are four steps.

  1. Figure out the ancestor you have in common with the person in question.
  2. Count the number of times you say “great” and “grand” in describing that person. (For example, my great great great grandmother would be four, one for each great and grand.)
  3. Do the same with the person you’re trying to figure out your relationship to. (For example, if the common ancestor is that person’s great great grandmother, their number is three.)
  4. Look at the numbers. Whichever is lower, that’s the degree of cousins, and the difference between the the two numbers is the removal. So in this example, that relative is my third cousin, once removed.

Try it. It’s really easy! And I think it’s a lot simpler than trying to follow the chart on Lifehacker.

 

The curse of abundance

By 9 Comments

deathcertificatesarrayIn my role as a professional organizer, I often help people deal with an overabundance of items. Our work together allows my clients let go excess and organize those meaningful things they decide to keep. It’s very rewarding work and it’s led me to believe fervently that one’s life is easier when you streamline your possessions to those you use and love.

I’ve learned that when I have too much of an item–even something great–it becomes much less meaningful. Years ago I noticed that if I had a Costco-sized package of Oreos I wouldn’t eat any of them. But if I bought a small package of a treat, I’d enjoy a few at a time until they were gone.

What does this have to with genealogy research? Well, believe it or not at the moment I feel like I have an overabundance of death certificates and they’re stressing me out a bit. My September research trip resulted in my putting my hands on a few death certificates. Those led me to others and right now I’m looking at a small pile of five death certificates. All of them came my way as paper copies, so I need to scan them and file them electronically, in addition to filing the actual pieces of paper. I think I’ve gleaned all the information off them and put them into Reunion, but I want to take another pass at them to make sure I’m not missing anything.

If I had just one death certificate, I’d get the task taken care of lickety split. But since I have five, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed and dragging my heels a little. Crazy, isn’t it? Overabundance can lead to paralysis.

I love finding death certificates. I’m fortunate that I have Missouri ancestors and here in Missouri it’s incredibly easy to download death certificates. Yet here I find myself not appreciating my bounty just because I have too much.

The solution? Like any big project, I need to do a little at a time. I could break the project down into steps (scanning, for instance) and do that step for all the certificates, then move on to the next one. Or I could just process each certificate separately. Or I could stop overthinking this and just do something. (In order to get the photo for this post I needed to take my death certificates to my ScanSnap SV600 contactless scanner, so I went ahead and scanned all of them. At least I’ve done something!)

All this speaks to the benefit of handling my genealogy findings as soon as they come in. If I let tasks pile up, they turn into chores instead of treats.

 

Join the mailing list!

When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.