Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

The value of a clean computer desktop

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My computer desktop

My computer desktop

I’m a professional organizer, but I’m not a neatnik. I’m actually a naturally messy person, though through the years I’ve managed to create habits that have kept me a bit neater. For some years, for example, I’ve managed to clear off the top of my desk at the end of each workday.

My computer desktop was another matter. I use a Mac and its robust search capabilities have meant that I never paid all that much attention to where I stored files. So my computer’s desktop was typically a cluttered mess of items that happened to land there. It didn’t bother me particularly, since I didn’t even see the desktop once I had a program or two open.

But one day last summer, I decided to clear it off. And what a difference that’s made! The process of clearing it off was really helpful. I actually found some genealogy-related files among the clutter in my desktop and I dragged them to the appropriate within my genealogy folder (the one truly organized folder on my computer). By the way, it took me only 30 minutes to go from truly cluttered to clear.

Now that my desktop is clean, it’s become a place where I can temporarily store files so I can easily find them. That’s really helpful for parking photographs that I need to upload to this blog or my Peace of Mind Organizing blog (or to Rubbermaid’s blog, where I’m a regular contributor). It’s also a helpful place to temporarily store a downloaded genealogy document until I can enter into Reunion, my family tree software.

At the end of the day, when I turn off my computer, I either file or delete the few files that landed on my desktop during the day. It’s much like how I tackle my day’s worth of clutter on my physical desktop.

If your computer desktop is cluttered up, I urge you to go through it and delete and file. I hope you find it as helpful as I did!

Marrying my electronic and paper files

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Store census documents by pressing Print, rather than SaveI used to be a paper gal. But when it comes to my genealogy records, I’ve stopped pressing the Print button. At the moment almost all my genealogy research is being done online, so I’m really understanding the utility of clicking Save rather than Print.

Part of the reason I’ve been able to make the shift is that I’ve set up a good electronic file system. That gives me confidence that I’ll find what I need on my hard drive.

Switching from paper to electronic has ramifications in at least a couple of areas. It means that it’s changing how I do things from this point forward. That’s no problem. But it also means I have a backlog to deal with. In the past, I’d print and file census documents and other resources I found online, rather than save them electronically. While all the information are recorded in my software (I use Reunion), the source documents themselves might be in a file or might be on my hard drive.

So this week, I’ve been working on marrying the two systems. It’s going to be a long process. What I’m doing is taking out a file folder for a couple and going through the documents, making sure they’re included in my software and seeing if they’re on my hard drive. If they’re not, I’m finding them online and saving them within my file structure.

I’m also taking the opportunity to do one other thing while I’m in there. As I look at census documents, I’m adding siblings of my ancestors to my family tree software, something I blogged about doing a few months ago.

This may sound really tedious to you, but I’m having a good time. It’s allowing me to reacquaint myself with various couples and really pay attention to all their kids, not just my direct ancestor. It’s also giving me the chance to clean up my hard drive and re-file errant files (and move some documents that accidentally ended up in my Genealogy folder). I’m not going through each line systematically. To keep it interesting, I’m jumping from family to family, choosing file folders as my whims take me.

Since I’m no longer printing newly found documents, I guess I’m slowly phasing out my paper files. And that’s okay with me. My hard drive is fast, spacious, orderly, and backed up both to an external hard drive via Time Machine and to a remote computer via Crash Plan Pro.

I’m looking forward to the comfort of having everything on my hard drive. Since I store my paper files in a closet a few steps from my desk, I also love that my data will be at my fingertips whenever I’m using my computer. It’ll be great when I travel, especially if I take research trips, to have all that information available to me. I believe this will be time well spent.

Using a timer to aid your research

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Use a timer to keep you focused and capture small snippets of timeToday I have time to devote to some genealogy research. But I also have a couple of phone appointments and I need to work out at the gym. And my knitting group meets tonight. So my day is sort of chopped up.

Sometimes I get caught in the trap of feeling like I can’t start any family history research unless I have a large chunk of uninterrupted time ahead of me. The trouble with that I rarely have a large chunk of time available. So if I wait, I won’t get much done.

This morning at 11 am, knowing that I wanted to go to the gym at about 11:30, I sent the timer on my iPhone for 25 minutes. It served a couple of purposes:

  • It kept me focused on the research until the timer went off
  • It kept me from losing myself in the research and missing going to the gym
  • Stopping at the end of 25 minutes kept me chomping at the bit to do more research, so later today I’ll be able to set my timer again and get more work done.

I think that fear of getting lost in the work sometimes prevents me from starting, so the timer really is my friend. And I’m always amazed at what I can get done in short bursts of time.

In his book, Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, author Mark Forster talks about timed bursts and how taking breaks increases productivity (versus working long stretches of time). He advocates using a timer and cautions to stop the moment the timer goes off, so that you want to get back to work when the break is over. The brain craves completion, he explains.

My intention is to use the timer throughout the day and see if I can wedge in at least two hours of genealogy time in my day.

Next time you have a short period of time to do some family history research, pull out a timer and see if it helps!

Some changes to Organize Your Family History

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Over the weekend, I made some upgrades to this website. Before now, it was a blog only. But I added a few pages, which you can find in the navigation bar at the top of the page. I think that turns it from a blog into a website!

Here’s a summary of what’s new and different:

  • Rather than seeing four full blog posts showing on each page, you’ll now find excerpts from six blog posts will be on each page. Just click the title of any post to see the whole post.
  • I changed up my bio in the sidebar and added a photo, so you can put a face with Organize Your Family History.
  • You can now search blog posts by category, as well as tag.
  • Speaking of searching, the search function has been moved from the bottom of the page to the top.
  • You can get a better sense of what Organize Your Family History is about, via the new About page.
  • I’m now offering some genealogy-related organizing services, which are described in the new Services section.
  • I included a link in the navigation bar to Peace of Mind Organizing, the organizing business I started in 2005.
  • You can now easily download free printables that were previously buried within blog posts. I intend to create and add more free downloads (and perhaps even some paid downloadable products).
  • I added a Contact form. (Feel free to drop me a note!)

In the coming months, I intend to amp up my attention to this site and I hope you’ll find the new content both interesting helpful. If you have any specific topics you’d like to see me cover, please let me know either via the comments or the contact form!