Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Sorting out all the learning opportunities

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Ancestry.com learning centerI absolutely love that there are so many different ways to learn about genealogy. I swear I could easily spend 40 hours a week learning about family history research (and researching my family). Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of time to devote to it.

Over the past year, since I’ve become more serious about genealogy, I’ve signed up for courses, purchased books (even read some), subscribed to online services like Ancestry.com, Fold 43 and Genealogy Bank, visited online forums, gone to a conference and I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed by all the ways there are to learn.

Family Tree University (FTU) has many, many interesting courses. They have ones you take online at your own pace in a given period of time. They have live webinars. They have recorded webinars. They have virtual conferences. They have video classes. It makes my head spin a little.

What I’m come to discover is that it’s much easier for me to make the time for a learning opportunity if it happens at a scheduled time. It may be the former writer in me, but I’m very deadline driven. I signed up for a FTU virtual conference last winter, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to participate live but being satisfied that I could download the videos of the classes. Have I watched all of them yet? No.

As I ponder this, I realize what I need to do is to create a list of the resources I’ve downloaded and schedule time to watch/read them. And I need to make a commitment to not purchase any more until I’ve watched what I have.

While I’m at it, I’d be smart to create a list of free online learning opportunities–or those I’ve already paid for by virtue of a subscription, like Ancestry.com’s Learning Center,and try to make a point of perusing those. I’ll also be sure and post that list here once I’ve compiled it.

Family history research can be really overwhelming, in my experience. This is one aspect that’s teetering on the edge of making me feel overwhelmed and I’m bound and determined to get a handle on it!

Making time for family history research

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I love doing family history research. I really do. I’m also trying to figure out ways to integrate it into my organizing business, so technically it’s work. So why haven’t I done it in more than a week?

I can make excuses for why I haven’t made time to do any research. A week ago I returned from a week-long trip and I jumped right back in to full client load. My desk is a mess. (Embarrassing, but true.) But here’s the thing: since I’ve been home I’ve managed to catch up on most of the TV shows I recorded in my absence. I finished reading a book. I watched a couple of college basketball games.

It really does come down to priorities. (Priority management is a more accurate phrase than time management.)

As I contemplated the fact that I frequently close up shop and leave my desk for the day before I do any research, I realized a few things:

  • The messy desk really does get in the way. (Note to self: Clear it off every night like you used to!)
  • The time I thought I’d try to do it every day, 5 pm, isn’t conducive. Now that it’s winter, it’s dark at that time. I like a lot of light when I’m squinting at old handwriting.
  • If I’m running late trying to get the rest of my work done, I continue working past 5 pm and research is sacrificed.
  • I need to make it very, very easy to start doing the research. One way I might do that is to outline for myself at the end of each research session what I want to research at the start of the next one. Then it’ll be as simple as grabbing a file from the cart stored in a closet a few feet away, rather than rolling out the whole cart. And it gives me immediate focus.
  • I need to examine my priorities for my time and see where this research fits in. Is it more important than keeping up with social media or whittling my inbox down to zero? If so, I should do it before I do those daily tasks.
  • It’s important to recognize that I don’t need hours at a time to do research. As little as 30 minutes can glean some great results.

The process of writing this blog post has given me new resolve. I have a lighter day tomorrow and I’m going to make sure I do some research, earlier in the day. And I’ll make a note at the end of the session about how I want to start the next session.

I think I’ll take a few minutes to clear off my desk right now.

Overwhelm strikes again

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My genealogy mind map

Today’s mind map

Today I had a little time to work on family history research and, once again, I got all tangled up in my head on what to work on. A tiny bit of perfectionism reared its head as I considered the best use of my time.

When I start to feel like this, I frequently get nothing done. And that’s what happened today–no genealogy research has taken place.

But what I did do was this: I got out a blank piece of paper and I did a little mind map, trying to get a big-picture view of my research. I thought about whether it was more important to grow my tree or to have as much information as possible on the ancestors who are already in my tree. (I’m adding only verified ancestors to my tree, but in the system I’ve created for myself it takes only one verified fact for me to enter someone to my family history software.)

In the course of creating the mind map (pictured above), I realized that, right now, I want my focus to be adding ancestors. I’m hoping in 2013 to take one or more research trips and the more ancestors I have on my tree at the time of such a trip, the better. (Or so it feels today.)

Of course, now I’ve run out of time to do any research today. But when I turn my attention to it later this week, I’m hoping the overwhelmed feeling will be gone.

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.