Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Overwhelm rears its ugly head

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In the past, I was easily overwhelmed by my genealogy research. As my tree grew, so did my opportunities for research. I would sit down to research with no idea what to work on. A few years ago, I implemented a quarterly plan, where I would focus on one line per quarter, which helped narrow things down. That helped somewhat.

My focus got better when I implemented a few practices:

  • I decided to focus on one line (my Adams line) all year. That was last year, and this year, I’ve been sticking with the Adams family.
  • I started keeping an informal research log. At the end of each session, I write down next steps.
  • I consistently research every day, even if it’s as little as 15 minutes. That keeps my head in the game and means I don’t have to refamiliarize myself with my research at the beginning of the session.

Things were going along very well for the last six to nine months. Then I went to RootsTech.

The double-edged sword of being focused is that you get a lot done, but you have blinders on about other avenues or opportunities for research. RootsTech stripped off those blinders and I took lots of notes about possible things to research. I also came back from the conference with a busy client schedule and not as much time for research.

The result? I feel like I’m floundering a bit. I’m still researching daily. I’m still writing down next steps, but I’m a bit all over the place.

So today, I’m resolving to regain focus. My intention is to do that by choosing a project I can complete in a reasonable amount of time, one that has a clear start and finish. I have a bunch of unprocessed documents in my Surnames folder. As part of my digital workflow, I’m supposed to process all documents as I download them, but when I was at the Family History Library right before RootsTech I wasn’t able to do that. I’m going to focus on extracting data from those documents and filing them properly. In the case of the handwritten deeds I downloaded, I’ll also transcribe them.

I’m already feeling better because I have a focus, I know what I’ll be working on and I’ll be doing so systematically until I finish. When I come across other leads, I’ll write them down in my follow up folders in Evernote. (I keep follow up folders by surname in my Genealogy stack.) I’m hopeful that by the time I finish with this project I’ll have my mojo back and be able to stave off those feelings of overwhelm!

Keep your eyes out for a new 30 x 30 challenge in April. I’m going to need one!

Unmodified photo by Chris Duglosz via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Keeping track of my progress

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Keeping track of genealogy researchThis year, I’ve been focusing on one family line, the Adams line. I’ve been trying to gather as much information as possible not just on my direct-line ancestors (my focus in past years) but also on the siblings of my direct-line ancestors. It’s fun and fulfilling. But it’s also a bit overwhelming because there are so many people I can’t remember all of them.

I keep track of everything in my family-tree software, Reunion. But I also like having an at-a-glance summary of where I stand in my research on each person. Three years ago, I created a progress chart, which had a series of tabs on a spreadsheet in which I marked the documents I had found on each of my direct-line ancestors. That worked pretty well and gave me an at-a-glance summary I craved.

I find myself wanting a similar chart for all my research subjects, including the collateral lines, and I’m struggling with getting my arms around that. Part of my problem, I think, is that I want to be able to see everything at the same time, which is challenging when your family tree’s branches stretch wide.

Here’s what I’ve settled on. I’m creating a single spreadsheet for all the data I’m looking for for each family group (B/M/D, censuses, newspaper, military, wills, land, etc.). In my previous progress chart, I’d had all my direct-line ancestors listed on each sheet, with a separate sheet for each type of data. In this new chart, I have all my data types across the top, with a row for each member of the family group. I have a separate sheet (a tab) for each family group. I decided to start with my parents in the first sheet and work back in time by generation.

I’ve spent a little time with it and I think it’s going to be really helpful. As I started filling it out, I paid attention to how it made me feel and I had two conflicting feelings:

  • Overwhelm because there are so many people to enter into it and so many data types to research
  • Excitement as I realized how many opportunities for research there are

I think the key to making this useful and not overwhelming is putting one family group on each sheet. That narrows the focus and allows me to see what I have and what I can still research. It also helps me avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Having each family group on a separate sheet makes it easier to fill out the chart initially as well. I ordinarily enjoy filling out forms and updating progress charts. But this one was so large it felt like it might turn into a big exercise in tedium. So if I take it one family group at a time, it feels like fun, not drudgery.

I’ll keep you posted. Once I have it in shape where I think it might be useful to others, I’ll blog again and offer to send it to anyone who might want to use it.

If you have a similar chart and/or have any suggestions for mine, please share in the comments. I’m all ears!

My genealogy research plan for 2017

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I’ve been giving some thoughts to the goals I want to set for my genealogy research for next year. I’m a big goal setter and I’ve written posts about my genealogy goals for 2013, 2014, and 2015. (I guess that I didn’t set any for 2016. I blame my puppy, Bix, who completely disrupted the 2015/2016 transition.)

I reviewed those posts this week and was struck by the fact that while I’m pretty good about setting genealogy goals, I’m pretty bad at achieving them.

So this year, I decided to keep it painfully simple. I’m setting only three four goals. And I’m narrowing my focus, in a big way.

I know that I do better with fewer options because I’m easily overwhelmed by choices. In 2014 I addressed that by coming up with a plan to focus on one family line per quarter.

In 2017, I’ve decided to take this a step further and focus on a single family line the whole year. 2017 is  going be the year of the Adams family. This feels big to me–simultaneously exciting and weirdly scary. But I feel if I keep my focus on the Adams family (starting by finishing the transcribing and abstracting George Washington Adams’ giant pension file), I will stay more focused and dig deeper. I’m a little concerned it might get boring, but I don’t think so.

You can bet that I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

The three four goals I’ve set (in concert with limiting my focus) are:

  1. Research at least five days a week
  2. Take at least one research trip
  3. Attend at least two genealogy conferences, to avoid tunnel vision and keep me sharp. (One of those will be RootsTech, since I’m speaking there. I haven’t yet determined the other(s).)
  4. Create a habit of logging each research session. (I added this goal after my ruminations on December 27 that led to this post.)

How about you? Do you set goals for your genealogy research? If so, do you care to share them?

Getting past overwhelm by breaking a project down

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getting past overwhelm by breaking down a projectAs I plug away at transcribing my 2nd great grandfather’s 137-document pension file, I keep thinking to myself how valuable it is that I’m doing this one small document at a time. When I started, the idea of transcribing this vast file seemed insurmountable. The printed sheaf of papers that I received from the National Archives is nearly an inch tall!

But rather than think about the enormity of transcribing the whole file, I’m just looking at the next document. Then the one after that. I’m trying to work on it at least 30 minutes daily (even after the succcessful end of my latest 30 x 30 challenge two weeks ago, I’ve only missed a couple of days) and slowly but surely I’m getting through it. Today, I transcribed documents 47 and 48. Before long, I’ll be halfway done.

Once or twice I’ve questioned the value of this exercise. But as soon as I do that, I discover something I didn’t notice on first reading, when I wasn’t transcribing. There’s no doubt in my mind that transcribing these pension documents is a valuable use of my time.

So here’s my big takeaway, which of course can be applied to many aspects of my life. When I’m facing a large, seemingly insurmountable project, I can get past overwhelm and eventually complete it if I:

  • Break it down into small tasks
  • Do one task at a time
  • Work on it very regularly, for a small period of time

This strategy is working well on the pension file. I can’t wait to get all the way to the end and see what discoveries has in store for me!

A commenter asked for the steps on requesting a Civil War pension file.  Here they are:

  1. Go to this page on the National Archives website.
  2. Select NATF 85D: Federal Military Pension Application – Civil War and Later Complete File
  3. Select delivery format (I selected paper)
  4. Click Add to Cart
  5. Login or register
  6. Fill out form with your ancestor’s name, military unit and other information (if you don’t have that, check out Ancestry.com or Fold3.com to get it)
  7. Pay $80 online
  8. Wait for your packet!