Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

My podcast is coming back!

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Heads up: This is not genealogy related!  I wanted to let you know that my co-host, Shannon Wilkinson, and I have decided to restart the weekly podcast, Getting to Good Enough, that we hosted for five years from 2018 to 2023. At that time, we decided to shut it down because it had stopped being fun and our lives had become a little complicated. But two years later we realized we missed talking with one another every week and we decided to bring it back.

Getting to Good Enough is a podcast about letting go of perfectionism so you can live life with more ease, less stress and a lot more laughter. It’s a free-wheeling conversation between two close friends who discuss life’s challenges and successes, all through the lens of letting go of perfectionism. Many of our listeners have told us it’s like sitting at the kitchen table with us while we chat over a cup of coffee.

In our first run, we published 254 episodes. They’re all still available to listen to. We’re relaunching with four “Best of GTGE” episodes, the second of which will be published tomorrow, August 14. The first new episodes will start airing on Thursday, September 4 and we’ll publish one every Thursday. And this time around, the podcast will be available in video as well as audio formats. You can listen on the website or on your podcast platform of choice. Or you can watch on YouTube.

Shannon and I both enjoy family history research and we did do one episode, Episode 20, focused on genealogy. If you want, you can listen to now if you’d like. I suspect the topic might come up in future episodes as well.

We recorded the first new episode yesterday and it was so fun to get back into it. We’re a little rusty, but I know it will get easier. Podcast technology has changed a lot in the last seven years, so we’re experiencing a bit of a learning curve. We figure it’s good for our brains.

If you enjoy listening to podcasts, I hope you’ll give us a try once the new episodes start airing on September 4! You can sign up at the podcast website to receive an email whenever new episodes are published.

We shot a little a trailer, if you’re interested. Be sure and watch to the end!

What is a perfectionist?

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I co-host a weekly podcast called Getting to Good Enough, all about letting go of perfectionism so you can do more of what you love. Each week, my co-host, Shannon Wilkinson, and I discuss getting past perfectionism in some aspect of life.

I’ve internalized a definition of perfectionism that I first learned from time-management guru Harold L. Taylor more than a dozen years ago. This definition rings true for me and informs a lot of what I do. I thought I’d share it with you because I think it applies to genealogy and, really, to everything we do.

A perfectionist is someone who spends more time on a task than it merits.

Next time you’re spending a lot of time trying to get something just right, ask yourself whether the task really merits that effort. It can be a great way to let good enough be good enough. And that can save you time, effort and angst.

What genealogy podcasts do you listen to?

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Podcasts are all the rage right now. I listen to them daily and enjoy a mixture of self-help, true crime and entertainment. I binge listen to some and listen to others as soon as they are published.

For some reason, I haven’t added a lot of genealogy podcasts to the line up. There are only two genealogy podcasts I listen to regularly. They are:

I’ve been fortunate enough to be a guest on both these shows.

I know I’m missing out on some great genealogy podcasts, so I turn to you. What genealogy podcasts do you listen to? I’d love to add your favorites to my play list.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Watch me discuss genealogy on Hoardganize podcast

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A couple of weeks ago I recorded a video podcast episode for Hoardganize, an organizing podcast hosted by Rachel Seavey of Collector Care. We focused on genealogy: getting started, as well as organizing results. I’m accustomed to audio podcasts, so I find it fairly tortuous to watch myself talk. I’m hopeful that it’s less tortuous for you. That aside, I think we had a great discussion and there’s some good info in there.

You can watch the video on YouTube or, if you prefer, listen to it on the Hoardganize website.

Here are some highlights:

  • Where to start: start with yourself and work up your tree (1:30)
  • Gather the basic info: birth, marriage, death, censuses
  • Track info in an Ancestry.com tree or download info and build a family tree using separate software
  • Research direct lines (9:00)
  • Move to collateral lines
  • Using Family Search (10:25)
  • Using libraries (15:06)
  • U.S. research versus other countries (16:11)
  • Organizing your documents (17:54)
  • My file naming protocol
  • Keeping track of what you’re doing now and what you want to research in the future

I hope you find it helpful. If you do, please feel free to share!