Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

October 30 x 30 update

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We had a good turnout of folks who said they wanted to participate in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge, in which we committed to doing 30 minutes of some genealogy-related activity for 30 days in a row. How’s it going? Please report in!

For me, this month’s challenge has been harder than usual. I’ve had a busy month with early appointments with organizing clients and I gave a talk at the St. Louis Genealogy Conference, last Saturday, which was a bit time consuming to prepare. So I haven’t researched each and every day–according to my research log, I missed three days completely. I know that on some of the days I did research, I wasn’t able to put in a full 30 minutes. I’m confident it will average to 30 minutes a day (helped by the fact that I attended a six-hour genealogy conference). And I’m okay with that.

Because of the 30 x 30 challenge, I definitely did research that I wouldn’t have otherwise done. This is why I love these challenges!

Even though I fell off the wagon a little bit, I fully intend to keep going and try not to miss any days the rest of the month. That’s progress, because I have a tendency to abandon daily challenges (especially those that involve exercise) if I break the chain.

I’d love to hear how it’s going for you! Have you been able to keep up with daily research? If you missed a day, did you hop right back on the challenge?

Don’t let perfectionism paralyze you

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As I mentioned earlier this summer, I’ve started a podcast with Shannon Wilkinson called Getting to Good Enough. Every week we release a new episode about overcoming perfectionism so you can do more of what you love.

Perfectionism can certainly come into play with genealogy research, which Shannon and I explored that in this week’s episode. Shannon is a newer genealogy researcher (she went with me to RootsTech this year) and she has some perfectionist tendencies. She was very fortunate to uncover a literal treasure trove of family documents when she was cleaning out her mother’s home after her mother moved to a care home. She quickly became overwhelmed by the responsibility of the stewardship of these documents and was striving to handle them perfectly. She was paralyzed and couldn’t get started on working with them.

In Episode 20 of the podcast, which is one of our “Good Enough in Practice” episodes where we explore how we’re embracing good enough in our own lives, Shannon and I discuss how perfectionism can interfere with progress in genealogy research. We brainstormed how she could get started with her documents and she put together a plan. Shortly after our discussion she was able to get started processing them. I encourage you to give it a listen. I think it’s an interesting discussion.

You can listen right on our website or on iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher.

Process vs results

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When it comes to your genealogy research, are you in it for the process or the results? I got to thinking about that question recently when I was teaching a client how to process her genealogy source documents in Reunion. When you’re first starting, it can be a slow process. It definitely gets easier.

As we were working through some documents, she asked me how long it takes me to process a document. (The answer to that question, of course, is “It depends on the document.”) Then she asked, “Does it get faster?”

As a new genealogist, she understood that it’s necessary to analyze and glean information from all her documents (and create a source citation) if she wants to be a researcher, not just a searcher. But she was finding progress to be frustratingly slow. I had to break it to her that, even for experienced researchers, genealogy is a marathon, not a sprint.

That got me thinking: Am doing this for the process or the results? I realized that, speaking personally, it’s about the process for me. I think that’s because I don’t feel there’s a finish line with my genealogy research. There’s always more to learn about my ancestors and I really enjoy the process of discovery. And I actually like the painstaking process of the documentation that follows the discovery.

I’m also a knitter and we have this same discussion in knitting. When I start a project, am I doing it for the finished product or for the enjoyment of the knitting? The answer to that question can inform what projects I take on. A Fair Isle sweater would be (for me) a bear to knit, but if I love them and would wear one with pride, it’s worth the effort. That’s not the kind of knitter I am, however. For me, in knitting as in genealogy, it’s all about the process. I have any number of hand-knit garments, shawls and bags that I ended up rarely using. But I sure loved making them.

How about for you? When it comes to your genealogy research, do you enjoy the process or are you in it for the results? (Or perhaps there’s a whole different element I’m not thinking of.) I’d love to hear.

Photo by Nynne Schrøder on Unsplash.

Gene-alogy vs jen-ealogy

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Here’s a something I’ve been wondering about since I started going to genealogy conferences about five years ago:

Why do some people pronounce our favorite pastime with a short e, like JEN-ealogy?

I’ve always pronounced the word with a long “e” as in “gene.” But I’ve heard some esteemed conference speakers pronounce it with a short e, as in “jen.”

The screengrab from Merriam-Webster.com, above, indicates that my pronunciation is the preferred one. And, in fact, if you go to the website and click on the little speaker icon, you’ll hear the word pronounced that way. But the website also points to another alternate pronunciation, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard: jeen-ee-AL-ogy with a short “a”.

So I’ve put together a little poll: How do you say the word?

I’m looking forward to seeing the results!


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