Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Avoiding the paralysis of perfectionism

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If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might know that I co-host a podcast called Getting to Good Enough. Every week, my co-host Shannon Wilkinson and I publish an episode aimed toward helping listeners let go of perfectionism so they can do more of what they love.

This week we’ll publish Episode 113, but way back in Episode 20, which was published on October 11, 2018, we focused on genealogy. (I blogged about it at the time.) So far it’s our only genealogy-focused episode, though the principles we discuss every week can be applied to genealogy.

It occurred to me that some of the readers of this blog might not be aware of the podcast, or that we had a genealogy-focused episode, so I wanted to draw your attention to it. You can listen on our website or on iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher.

Letting go of perfectionism has become one of my passions and it was the subject of the RootsTech talk I gave in February, as well as the Zoom presentation I did for the North Hills Genealogists in May. I am indebted to the readers of this blog who helped me craft that presentation by responding to my request for comments on how perfectionism has been a problem in genealogy.

I urge you to give it a listen. Feel free to let me know in the comments if perfectionism sometimes gets in the way of your genealogy research and whether you’ve come up with any strategies to get past it!

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

Please help with my RootsTech talk

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How does perfectionism get in your way?Back in late September, I created a post asking for your input on the impact of perfectionism in genealogy as I worked on my RootsTech talk, “The Imperfect Genealogist.” I was surprised when I didn’t get much of a response and I then I discovered that an updated security package with my GoDaddy account had turned off commenting as a default and I didn’t realize it.

I’m getting back to work on my talk (it’s due next month!) and thought I’d try again. Thanks very much to those of you who replied to the September post after I got comments up and running! I’d love to hear more from others in comments to this post. Here’s what I wrote in September.

I think about perfectionism a lot. It’s the topic of the podcast I co-host with my friend and life coach Shannon Wilkinson every week. But lately I’ve been thinking about it particularly in relation to genealogy, since I’m working on my RootsTech talk next year, called “The Imperfect Genealogist.”

Here are some ways I have seen perfectionism causing genealogists to stall in their research:

  • You don’t know how to do source citations correctly, so you don’t do them at all.
  • You haven’t come up with the perfect way to organize your research, so you just keep doing research without organizing it.
  • You don’t have a whole weekend to devote to your genealogy research, so you don’t do any research at all.
  • You don’t know the very best way to preserve your archival documents, so you let them languish in an unsafe, non-archival environment. (We discussed this very thing on Episode 20 of Getting to Good Enough.)

It’s your turn. Can you help me out and let me know  how perfectionism can get in the way of your genealogy life? Please share the things you tend to get perfectionistic about and the impact it can have. (If you’ve figured out strategies for getting past that, I’m all ears!) Just leave a comment on this post. I’m sure you’ll contribute things I haven’t even thought of!

 

Talking about downsizing on Generations Cafe

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I was so happy to be interviewed once again for Amy Johnson Crow’s  podcast, Generations Cafe. It’s a great podcast and I look forward to each new episode.

This week, Amy kicks off a series on downsizing, based on her recent experience in moving her parents from their home of many decades into a smaller space. In this week’s episode, called Downsizing and Family History, we talked at length about how it can be tricky for genealogists to decide what to let go of when they recognize the potential genealogical value of items for future generations.

The intersection of my work as an organizer and my passion as a genealogist is one of my favorite places to spend time, so I really enjoyed this opportunity to talk with Amy. (If you want to learn a little about how Amy organizes her own family history research, check out her How They Do It interview on this blog from July 2017.)

If you’re not already listening to Generations Cafe, I urge you to subscribe. If you’re new to podcasts, Generations Cafe is a great first genealogy podcast to subscribe to! The podcast showcases Amy’s clear-eyed view of genealogy and her excellent communications skills.

So glad to be a tiny part of it!