Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Where was I?

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I can use this form to plan my next family history research session

For me, the biggest impediment to starting a research session is not knowing exactly what to work on. Today, I was reading an article on what to do with the last few minutes of the workday and was struck by a suggestion from Julie Morgenstern, a hugely successful professional organizer. She suggests spending a couple of minutes to identify the most important thing you’ll do in the first hour of work the next day.

I do something like this for my work life (I plan the top four priorities for tomorrow), but it occurred to me this could be really useful for my family history research. If, at the end of each research session, I identified a few things to work on in the next session, the question of what to work on would disappear. I’ve flirted with this before, but what struck me today was that I could create a form (I love forms!) that I would fill out at the end of each session and keep it handy for the beginning of the next session.

I have a similar form for my work day (here’s a link to it on Pinterest), so I adapted it for my family history research. It’s pictured on this post. At the top I have the top four research items to work on. At the bottom, I have a checklist of things to make sure I do as I close up the session.

I think this form will go a long way toward getting me past that barrier to getting started. And making it easier to get started will help me carve out little bits of time to do my research.

 

 

Livescribe: A potentially great tool for genealogy researchers

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I recently purchased a Livescribe smartpen. (That’s a referral link; if you buy from it I get a small commission.) I bought the pen in anticipation of attending the national conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers, which I attended earlier this month in New Orleans. I’ve also used it in client appointments. Now that I have had it for a couple of weeks, I realize it could potentially be very helpful with my family history research.

What’s a smartpen? (Surely that’s a term coined by Livescribe.)  As you take notes on its special paper, it records the audio of what you’re listening to and links it with your notes. So, in replay mode, when you touch the paper with the pen, you hear what was being said when you made that note. You can also upload the recording and images of your notes to your computer (or the cloud, depending on which version of the pen you buy). When you click on your handwriting in the uploaded images, you hear what was being said as you were writing.

Think about that. It’s an audio recorder that’s linked to your written notes. So when you interview a family member, you can find what you want in the recording, based on your notes, instantly. If you attend a genealogy lecture (or conference), you don’t have to rely on your memory to understand your notes.

I feel like I have seen the future and it is the Livescribe smartpen.

There are a few versions of this pen. I bought the Livescribe Echo, which is the penultimate version. (The Pulse, which is no longer for sale, was the first and the Sky is the latest.) The Echo requires plugging in a cable to get the data off the pen and onto the computer. The newer version, the Sky, has wifi and uploads directly to Evernote. I chose the Echo because I wanted to make a smaller investment and don’t mind plugging in the cable.

On the advice of a Livescribe-loving friend, I also purchased the 3D recording headset, which produced really clear recordings, even in a noisy conference setting.

Here’s a video about how the Echo (the version I bought) works. My investment was only $100, including the headphones, thanks to a referral discount and special going on earlier this month. To me, it was well worth the investment!

 

My genealogy time-management plan

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Ticking clockWhen it comes to my family history research, time management is a big challenge for me. I want to hunker in and start researching my family. But I also want to learn more techniques for doing the research. And I want to stay on top of the resources that are available out there. And I want to read other genealogy blogs, because they’re so interesting.

But there are only so many hours in a day.

Getting overwhelmed has always been a challenge for me in my research. I think it has to do with the abundance of possibilities this avocation offers. There’s so much to learn about my family and so many ways to go about learning it.

I do well with structure and I know that, for me, structure helps me deal with that overwhelmed feeling I get in the face of too many choices. (This is a theme in my life.)

So in thinking about how I might structure my genealogy research time to avoid overwhelm and actually get stuff done, this is what I’m thinking:

  • I’d like to allot a certain number of hours a week to doing family history research.
  • I’d like to divide those house among a variety of pursuits, assigning a percentage to each.

So how do I go about deciding how many hours and what percentages? It’s pretty much a crap shoot. I know from experience there’s no point in worrying about getting it right at the outset. I need to just pick a starting point and adjust as experience dictates. So here’s the goal I’m going to set for myself, for the remainder of March and the month of April (keeping in mind I’m away for a week in April where no family history work will be done).

  • I’m going to strive to work 10 hours a week on family-history-research-related activities.

I’ll try to divide those ten hours this way:

  • 50 percent on actual research about my family (5 hours)
  • 20 percent going through downloaded learning resources (2 hours)
  • 20 percent reading genealogy blogs (2 hours)
  • 10 percent organizing my family history research (1 hour)

My research is pretty well organized and I don’t have a big backlog, so an hour a week should do it. I could see needing to spend more than an hour a week organizing.

This is just a starting point. I could be way off on my percentages. I think I’ll keep a time sheet of some sort so I can see how I’m actually using family history research time and how the percentages actually shake out.

I’ll report back how it works out and whether this structure has helped.

How about you? How do you balance the research with the learning and the organizing?

Photo by R.L. Hyde via Flickr

 

Embracing Evernote

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A couple of days ago I wrote that I was ready to give Evernote a try in organizing my genealogy notes. The truth of the matter is that it’s been a crazy busy week in my business and I haven’t had a chance to do any family history research and give Evernote a test drive.

On Wednesday, I did a web search to try to get my head around how Evernote could help me with my family history research. I quickly was overwhelmed when I didn’t find exactly what I needed. So I stopped looking.

But then, while I was at the gym, I listened to Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast comparing Evernote to Microsoft’s OneNote. That led me to her Premium Video all about Evernote. And that was all I needed to really feel comfortable with giving Evernote a trial run.

I am so excited by the notion that, using Evernote, I can quickly keep and organize my notes, documents, newspaper articles as I come to them during the course of my research. I have a feeling that my consumption of printer paper and toner is about to go down.

I’ve known about Evernote for years and had friends show me how they use it. But I never felt like I had the problem it was solving.  But now I can see how it really might simplify my genealogy life. And I look forward to telling you that I’m right. (I promise to tell you if I’m wrong, too!)