One of the things I love about doing daily genealogy research is that I never lose the thread of my research. I jot down next steps in my research log and then each morning I know just what to work on. No agonizing over what to research.
That’s how it’s supposed to work and how it does work when I’m in my groove. But, as I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I’ve done virtually no research for about a month. None. It makes me sad and it’s why I’m starting a 30 x 30 challenge on April 1.
Today I had a sliver of time and some motivation to get back in the saddle. But I faced a conundrum about what to work on. Most recently, I’d been working on eradicating the paper backlog I uncovered. But I’m away from home at the moment so I physically couldn’t do that.
It’s amazing to my how paralyzing the question, “What should I work on?” is. It can stop me in my tracks.
So I started thinking about the various strategies I could employ in figuring out what to work on today:
- I could look at my research log to see where I left off.
- I could work on processing my backlog of downloaded documents. (A small one has built up in recent months.)
- I could open up my Source Documentation Checklist and pick up where I left off.
- I could look at my follow-up notes, which I keep in notebooks by surname in Evernote.
- I could choose an ancestor (any ancestor) and see what research questions I have about him/her and get started there.
- I could look in my family-tree software (I use Reunion) and see if any of my families had a significant event today and work on them. (I wrote about that method here.)
- If I were at home, I could play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and close my eyes and grab a pin on my ancestor map, then do some research on that ancestor. (That’s my ancestor map in the photo.)
Here’s the thing: it doesn’t really matter what I start working on as long as I re-engage with my research. The important thing is that I get the ball rolling and work on something. (Anything, really.) As my co-host Shannon Wilkinson and I discuss on our podcast Getting to Good Enough, perfectionism can really get in the way of doing what you love!
What I ended up doing was working on my backlog of downloaded documents, which allowed me to jump right in and make progress. It felt great!
I would like to join you. I’ve found that accountability works wonders for me. I’ve been working on establishing good habits in other areas of life in 2019. Daily research/writing is one of the habits on my list to do this year. I think I will use this time from now until April 1st to come up with a plan of action.
Janine-I love your list! Helps me immensely. I have a huge backlog of papers to scan and file (digitally), but I get easily swayed by ‘bright, shiny objects.’ I try to do a little genealogical research each day, using a list to keep me on track. I also like Mary’s comments about accountability. I find I do better if it’s written done so I can refer to it. I also am trying to establish good habits in other areas of my life in 2019. I’m going to make my list right now!!
I also try to work on a little each day. In fact, I have set recurring genealogical tasks in my google calendar. I recently inherited tons of photos and slides, for example. So one of my tasks is to scan in and “process” 1 photo each day. I don’t always get to it, but I try. Sometimes I scan in 7 for the week and then work on the processing all week. By processing, I mean that I enter them in my genealogical program, create a source citation, put it on my Ancestry tree, and then store it in a file on my computer and in Google photos. It’s time-consuming but I have been consistent with my organization and techniques. I’m well aware that I have too many genealogical tasks listed for each day, but on my days off I can usually get to all of them.