Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Focusing my efforts in 2014

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My strategy for focusing my genealogy efforts in 2014In December every year, I take some time to set some goals. I set them for my organizing business and for my personal life. This will be the second year I’ve set goals for my genealogy research. (If you want, you can read the goals I set last year.)

In thinking about my genealogy goals for 2014, I realized that I really want to be more focused and organized in going about my research. I still struggle with not knowing what to work on in any given session. And that lack of focus makes it hard for me to actually get started.

I just hit upon an idea that I think I’ll try. I’m going to assign a family line to each quarter of the year. In this structure (which I just thought of, so it’s still evolving in my head), I won’t be limited to working on that line necessarily, but if I don’t have something else specific I want to do, I will work on the family line assigned to that quarter.

I’ve decided that the schedule will be as follows:

  • 1st quarter: Adams (my father’s father’s line)
  • 2nd quarter: Brown (my mother’s father’s line)
  • 3rd quarter: Rasco (my father’s mother’s line)
  • 4th quarter: Jeffries (my mother’s mother’s line)

At the start of each quarter, I’ll take stock of where my research lies. I’ll use my progress tracker to see what census, vital and military records I’ve already located.

During each quarter, I’ll try to do the following for each of the lines:

  • Fill in the gaps on my progress tracker
  • Make sure my surname files for that line are organized on my hard drive
  • Ensure that everything in my paper files for that line is also organized on my hard drive
  • Fill in collateral relatives on my family tree in Reunion
  • Search for sources for unsourced data provided to me by cousins
  • Go up at least one generation in verified information
  • Attach photos to my family tree in Reunion

What I like about this idea is that it should keep me more focused. And help me feel less overwhelmed. It should get me past the “what should I work on today?” question that can be such a barrier. And, perhaps best of all, it gives me some specific goals and a deadline–the end of the quarter. (I love a deadline!)

Pin the tail on the family tree

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igleheart1900Today I had a little time to do some genealogy research, but I couldn’t decide what to work on. So I opened my family tree in my Reunion software, looking for inspiration. I noted the right sidebar had a listing of people on my tree, sorted alphabetically by last name.

I closed my eyes, scrolled up and down a few times on the sidebar and then clicked. The person I landed on was Martha Jane Ellis (1845-1919), my great great grandmother. I set to work looking at her record, looking for missing information. I pulled out the file folder for Martha and her husband, Benjamin Franklin Igelheart (1845-1913) and continuing the process of marrying my paper and electronic files. I also started adding information on siblings into Reunion, something I didn’t do in my first recording of data.

Randomizing my selection feels like a nice piece of serendipity. I sometimes prefer that to a systematic approach. It feels more fun to me and this is all about fun, right?

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.

 

 

What should I work on today?

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I try to work on family history research at least once a week. (Writing a post on this blog twice a week has helped motivate me!)  I appreciate that I have the time to work on it that frequently, but I’ve discovered that sometimes it seems not quite frequent enough to keep my momentum going. By the time another week rolls around, I can’t quite remember where I left off and I don’t know what I should work on.

I know from my experience as a professional organizer that not knowing where to start can be paralyzing. I see this in my clients who are dealing with a lot of clutter: they can’t figure out where to start, so they don’t start at all.

This happened to me last Saturday. When I sat down to work on genealogy research, I couldn’t think of where to start. Of course, the truth is that I can start literally anywhere on my family tree. There’s always something to work on. I’m working my way up my tree and sometimes when I make a link to a new generation, I’ll skip ahead to work on finding information about those folks, even when there’s still plenty of information to seek on a generation closer to me in time.

So I could play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey when it comes to my family tree and pick any relative and start looking for more information on them. But I’m not keen on such a random approach (though that might be fun to try some day).

As it turned out, last weekend, I remembered that I’d found military information on an ancestor in a family history I’d downloaded, which led to some fun exploration.

At one point, when I first got back into this research, I kept a hand written research journal, which I filled out at the end of each research session and one of the items I would enter is next steps. Somehow, that has fallen by the wayside, but it would be a good habit to get back into.

Here are some ways I can think of to make sure that I don’t get paralyzed or delayed by the “what should I work on” question:

  • Keep a running list of questions to research. When I come across something I want to look into further (but don’t have time to research at that moment), I can add it to the list
  • Keep a “next steps” journal that I add to at the end of each research session
  • Start an electronic checklist for each ancestor of items to research, so I can tell at a glance what information is still up for grabs
  • Pick an ancestor at random and start exploring
  • On the other end of the spectrum, I could set up a very systematic approach and work through a single surname before I move to another

My personality is such that a systematic approach would feel constricting. I think keeping a list of things to work on and selecting the puzzle that jumps out at me that day is probably what’s going to work for me.

The key here, I think, is to know that there’s no wrong answer to the question, “What should I work on now?” That’s the beauty of this research. As long as I’m documenting what I find so that I don’t end up spending loads of times on false leads, any research I do is productive.