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!

Why do you want to organize your research?

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As a professional organizer (and podcaster who pays a lot of attention to perfectionism) I know that getting in touch with why you want to get organized is invaluable. Instead of thinking, “I should get organized,” which isn’t very motivating, you can take a moment to reflect on why getting organized is important to you. When you do that, you can more easily take action. And you can get past perfectionism and know when something is good enough.

This is true of organizing your home, and it’s also true of organizing your genealogy research. Why do you want to get organized? Here are some possible reasons:

  • To fully benefit from the information contained in the documents you find
  • To trust your research
  • To have facts at your fingertips to share with others
  • To have your research in a format that you can easily share
  • To feel less overwhelmed and more in control of your research
  • To pass along your legacy to your descendants

Knowing why it’s important to you to make the effort to organize your research can help you select a system that will work for you and help you let go of the notion that your system has to be perfect. Trust me, it doesn’t. It just needs to serve your “why.”

I’d love to hear about why you want to organize your research. Just leave a comment. For me, it’s all about benefiting from my work and trusting my research.

If you sign up for my free Mailing List, you’ll receive a series of emails from me that touch on these issues. If you’re not yet on the Mailing List, I encourage you to sign up!

What’s hiding in your unprocessed documents?

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One of the mysteries I’ve been pondering for years is the whereabouts of my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams (1938-1945) after his divorce in McLean County Kentucky in June of 1920 and before he checked into the National Home for Disabled Soldiers in Danville, Illinois, in July 1922. I haven’t found him on the 1920 census and it’s been bugging the heck out of me. In the divorce, he was awarded custody of his 12-year-old son Wayne Horace Adams (1907-1976) and for the longest time I was looking for the two of them.

A few years ago, I found Horace (as he was known then) on the 1920 census living with his half brother. I blogged about how an indexing error kept his whereabouts elusive. But I still haven’t found George on the census. When I was at RootsTech this year, I did a free consult with a genealogist from Trace, seeking help on the question George’s whereabouts between 1920 and 1922. The genealogist asked me why I wanted to know. I didn’t have a good answer, but I still wanted to know. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any Eureka! moments in that short session, but she gave me some avenues to pursue.

In any case, as I was working through my backlog of downloaded documents during the August 30 x 30 challenge, I processed a couple of newspaper articles that shed some light! It was very exciting. (I found out an article about him visiting a son in Oklahoma in 1921 and returning to Kentucky in 1922, a month before entering the soldiers’ home, with his son, after an extended visit to Oklahoma. I don’t know which son, but it’s something.)

Those newspaper articles had been languishing on my hard drive for two years! If I were processing my documents as soon as I downloaded them, which is always my goal, I would have had this information years ago. This is an inconsequential example, but it shows how these newspaper articles–which can be a bit tedious to process–can contain important nuggets. (Here’s a post I did on how I process newspaper articles.)

Lesson learned. My resolve is stronger than ever to eliminate that backlog, which I’m working on once again in this month’s 30 x 30 challenge.

Reminder: You can let go of “should”

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It’s natural to ask about questions about organizing (your genealogy or anything else) that start with the word “should.” Should I organize my documents this way or that way? Should I store things here or there? Should I focus on this or that?

When I try to answer a question that starts with should, the answer is almost always, “It depends.” Because it’s all about what will work for you.

I encourage my clients (and anyone else who will listen to me) to let go of the word should. And to also let go of asking questions that start with, “What’s the right way to…” or What’s the best way to….”

Because here’s the thing: I can’t tell you what you should do. Only you know what’s right for you. It can be much more beneficial to think in terms of what you’d like to do, or what you think will work best for you, rather than what you should do. Especially when it comes to organizing your genealogy research, the thing you should do (in my opinion) is the thing that works well for you and that you can keep up.

For example:

  • Maybe you’ve always heard that you should store your paper documents in binders, but you have trouble keeping up with that. Let go of that should and consider using file folders or scanning your documents.
  • Maybe you think you should print every document for the sake of posterity but you’re overrun with unfiled paper. You can let go of that should, particularly if your electronic documents are already organized.
  • Conversely, maybe you’ve heard you should scan every bit of paper and store files electronically, but you’re overwhelmed by the prospect. Bye bye, should. You can let your paper files be sufficient. Or just start storing new files electronically and leaving your papers unscanned.
  • Maybe you’re told you should keep a research log, but you just can’t get yourself to do it. A research log can be hugely beneficial. But don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have one just because you think you should.

In other words, set yourself up for success and do what works for you. Decide what your priorities are (accessibility for you, accessibility for others, ease of use, etc.) and focus your organizing systems on those priorities. Don’t do something just because someone told you you should if it doesn’t seem like it will work for you.

All that said, there are some genealogy shoulds that I think you should pay attention to:

  • You should cite your sources so you can find them again and know where your facts came from (but you don’t have to cite them perfectly if that’s getting in the way of citing them at all).
  • You should back up your electronic data in case of a crash. (I use an external hard drive and automated cloud storage.)

Genealogy is supposed to be fun. Don’t let the shoulds drag you down. Make your own choices and own them. And keep yourself open to new ways of doing things. (See what I did there? I told you all sorts of things I think you should do, without using that word. Take what works for you and let go of the rest.)

[If this is feels familiar, it’s because I initially published this post on May 17, 2016. Then I published it again on November 6, 2018 with a different title. It’s a message that really resonates with me right now, so I wanted to repeat it.]