Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Researching little and often

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Ten days into May, I am happy to report that I’ve kept up my daily research (except for one day). Typically when I finish a 30 x 30 challenge, I stop researching for days at a time. But this time, I am trying to do a little research every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

I find that when I’m able to research every day, it keeps me connected to my research and more inclined to start the next day. I pick up right where I left off and get right to work. (I’m working through the follow-up folder I created during the April challenge.)

In organizing, I talk about the concept of little and often quite a bit. If you’re trying to declutter, for example, daily effort can be so much more productive (and painless) than trying to put aside a full or half day to declutter. I think genealogy is more fun for most people than decluttering, but the same concept applies. You’ll make progress if you put in just a few minutes a day and you’ll stay connected to your research questions and quandaries.

I urge you to embrace little and often in your research (and other areas of your life)!

A quick thank you to all who purchased How I Do It or The Orderly Roots Bundle during the launch last week. I was so pleased that so many of you bought the guides and I hope you’re finding them helpful!

Quick Tip #19: Start where you are

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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 couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. I hope this one will help you treat yourself with kindness and get past overwhelm.

Start where you are

I hear from a lot of people who feel overwhelmed by the thought of transitioning from organizing their genealogy documents in paper form to digital form. The notion of having to scan everything gathered over years of research is truly daunting.

Here’s the advice I give: Just start where you are and from this point forward process new documents digitally. Then, slowly, you can make your way through the backlog, perhaps scanning a few documents each day and using a timer to keep you on task and keep you from burning out.

This advice can apply to doing other new things as well. Let go of any pressure to do everything at once or do everything perfectly. Start where you are at your current level of knowledge, and move forward. Perfectionism can be paralyzing (as my co-host and I discuss on our podcast, Getting to Good Enough, every week). Don’t let it stop you from pursuing a goal!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

How I Do It is out!

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I’m so excited to announce the release of my newest Orderly Roots Guide, How I Do It: A Professional Organizer’s Genealogy Workflow! I’ve been working on this guide for ages (way too long!) and am really happy with how it turned out.

If you’re curious about how I organize my research, you may want to purchase it. As a professional organizer, I never tell people how they should organize anything, because a successful organizing system works with the way you think. But I wanted to share how I organize my own genealogy research. Over the last decade, I’ve created a system that works really well for me. My goal is that readers will be inspired to implement those things that resonate with them and perhaps modify my methods to work for them.

You can read all about the guide (and purchase it) here. At 37 pages, it’s more than three times longer than any of the other three guides. That length allowed me to go into detail way beyond what I can do on the blog.

Speaking of the other three guides, I’ve created an Orderly Roots Bundle that gives you a discount when you purchase all four guides together. And I’ve created a much more robust sales page for the guides so potential buyers can have more information on which to make a decision. I encourage you to check it out!

 

Quick Tip #18: Let go of “should”

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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 couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This is one that I tell my clients (and myself) over and over.

Let go of the word “should”

Should is one of my least favorite words. My advice: Don’t let anyone tell you how you should organize your research, how far you should go out on your tree, or whether your Ancestry tree should be public or private. You do you.

That said, there are a few actual shoulds in genealogy. You should cite your sources. You should evaluate everything critically. You should do your own research, rather than just copying someone’s tree. You should be polite to your fellow genealogists.

But so much is optional in this wonderful hobby. I encourage you to follow your own sense of the way you want to do things. Particularly when it comes to organizing your research, the only should, in my opinion, is that you should use a system that works for you.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash