Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Don’t let perfectionism paralyze you

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As I mentioned earlier this summer, I’ve started a podcast with Shannon Wilkinson called Getting to Good Enough. Every week we release a new episode about overcoming perfectionism so you can do more of what you love.

Perfectionism can certainly come into play with genealogy research, which Shannon and I explored that in this week’s episode. Shannon is a newer genealogy researcher (she went with me to RootsTech this year) and she has some perfectionist tendencies. She was very fortunate to uncover a literal treasure trove of family documents when she was cleaning out her mother’s home after her mother moved to a care home. She quickly became overwhelmed by the responsibility of the stewardship of these documents and was striving to handle them perfectly. She was paralyzed and couldn’t get started on working with them.

In Episode 20 of the podcast, which is one of our “Good Enough in Practice” episodes where we explore how we’re embracing good enough in our own lives, Shannon and I discuss how perfectionism can interfere with progress in genealogy research. We brainstormed how she could get started with her documents and she put together a plan. Shortly after our discussion she was able to get started processing them. I encourage you to give it a listen. I think it’s an interesting discussion.

You can listen right on our website or on iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher.

Are you a perfectionist?

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As a professional organizer, I encounter perfectionism a lot. Many, if not most, of my clients are perfectionists. What I’ve seen over the years is that their perfectionism gets in the way of their ability to organize, because they either don’t feel they know enough to start, or they get discouraged because things aren’t going perfectly and stop. Then they call in reinforcements (in the form of me and/or my team).

I’ve been thinking about perfectionism a lot because I’ve started a podcast, with my friend and life coach Shannon Wilkinson, called Getting to Good Enough. In the weekly podcast, we discuss perfectionism and how it can get in the way of accomplishing the things you want do. We provide lots of suggestions for overcoming perfectionism so you more of what you love (like genealogy). Shannon is a newer genealogist and was with me at RootsTech this year–I expect there will be at least one genealogy-related episode!

I think many genealogists who find themselves surrounded by paper might be perfectionists. Some of them may be searching before the perfect system before they’ll start organizing and when it doesn’t appear (because there is no such think as a perfect genealogy organizing system), things pile up until they’re overwhelmed.

Also, some genealogists may avoid doing source citations because creating a perfect source citation so feels challenging  they don’t do it at all or decide they’ll do it later. (That’s a feeling I could relate to at the very beginning of my genealogy life.) Genealogy research logs might also fall into the category of things that perfectionist genealogists may avoid doing for fear of doing it wrong. (That’s why I’m satisfied with my “good enough” research log.)

If you can relate to these things, you might want to listen to the podcast! Go to our website, Getting to Good Enough, to listen to individual episodes or click on the iTunes link to subscribe to the podcast. You can also subscribe by email, if you’d like. (Scroll to the website’s footer for that sign up.)

Shannon and I have had a great time recording the episodes and we hope that you find them helpful and fun. It’s a fun new adventure for us!