Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

The value of the 30×30 challenge

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30x30 challengeTwo weeks ago, I started a 30 x 30 challenge in which I committed to working at least 30 minutes each day on my family history research for 30 days. My challenge goes from November 2 to December 1.

I’m happy to say that I’ve kept with my commitment, with the exception of Election Day, November 8. I was able to cut myself some slack over that (because: Election Day), especially since I spent the bulk of the day on November 6 working on my project.

During these past two weeks, I’ve been working on processing my great great grandfather’s Civil War pension file, which I received in the mail last year from the National Archives. What do I mean by processing? I detailed the procedure in a previous post, but in a nutshell, this is the drill:

  1. Put the documents in chronological order (they were in no particular order)
  2. Number the documents.
  3. Create a label for each with a source citation.
  4. Affix the labels.
  5. Scan the whole thing.
  6. Transcribe each document
  7. Abstract each document (that is, pluck out the salient data from each record).

I did this for the first of the three Union pension files I have, for my 3rd great grandfather, Richard Anderson Jeffries. The transcribing took place during an August 2015 30 x 30 challenge. It was a really beneficial effort.

For this current file, that of George Washington Adams, the task is more daunting. R.A. Jeffries had 27 documents in his file. G.W. Adams had 138. That’s right, five times as many.

I had already put the documents in order and started the labels some time in the last year. During this month’s 30 x 30 challenge I finished the labels, did the scanning and am now in transcribing mode. At least with the early documents, I find I can get about one document transcribed in 30 minutes. Sometimes I’ll also fit in abstracting a document in that time frame. So far, I have seven documents transcribed. Only 131 to go.

Obviously, if I do this 30 minutes at a time it will take several months of daily effort to complete. I’m going to try to put more than a half hour in most days. But I can tell you one great benefit of the challenge: If I hadn’t committed to 30 minutes a day, I think I’d have hesitated to get started because the task is so daunting. I have another couple of weeks in the challenge and by the end of it at least I’ll have a toe hold on the project.

The good news is that the information gets more interesting the further into the pension file I get. (There were some allegations of wrongdoing.) So a carrot is being dangled in front of my nose. And some of those later documents are really short so they shouldn’t take so long to transcribe.

I’m so grateful to have this focus and this time limit to get me through this somewhat tedious, if rewarding, project.

How about you? If you signed on to do the 30 x 30 challenge, how’s it going?

Time for a new 30 x 30 challenge!

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30x30 challengeIt’s been ten months since I implemented a 30 x 30 challenge, in which I challenged myself to do genealogy research for 30 minutes a day for 30 days. I started this new challenge on Wednesday, so my 30 days will go from November 2 to December 1.

I did this in August 2015 with great results. My attempt to do another one in January 2016 was ill-fated, thanks to the potent combination of a new puppy and a typically busy January for my organizing business.

For many people November is a busy time, what with Thanksgiving and the December holidays coming up. That’s not really the case for me; I don’t have to do any work for Thanksgiving and my Christmas responsibilities are limited to holiday cards. I will be enjoying a visit from my brother (who lives in Australia) during this time, but he won’t prevent me from doing genealogy research.

Thanks to my moratorium on bringing in new information, I’m newly focused on processing the rather complicated pension file of my great great grandfather, George Washington Adams (1845-1938), who fought with the 35th Regiment, Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. While living in the U.S. National Home for Volunteer Disabled Soldiers in Danville, Illinois, in the 1920s, he was turned in for not being as disabled as he said he was on his pension application. Investigations  and appeals ensued (he even got his senator involved). That made for a lot of documents to process–more than 150 pages worth! But it’s a true treasure trove of information and paints quite a picture of my ancestor.

I don’t think I’ll have a problem putting in 30 minutes (or more) a day, if life stays on an even keel.

Would anyone like to join me on a 30 x 30 challenge?

ETA: Commenter Maria asked for a photo of my puppy Bix, who just turned one. Here’s a favorite: celebrating victory after removing a squeaker from a toy. He loves destroying toys!

bixsqueaker

My moratorium on new information

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stoplightI love attending genealogy conferences and learning about new opportunities to learn more about my ancestors. I sat in on some of the National Archives Virtual Genealogy Fair and learned about new-to-me records I might explore for information on my ancestors. I got really excited about the possibilities. And then I was struck by revelation:

I will benefit more from processing the information I’ve already found than from seeking out new information.

I’m speaking personally, of course. For me, I think one way I can avoid being blindsided by overwhelm in my research is by focusing on the (not-unsubstantial) documents I’ve already found. I want to examine and evaluate them, keeping track of the clues contained in them and taking note of new avenues of research. I’ll keep a list of these next steps and I’ll try very hard not to explore them until I’ve caught up with what I have on hand. If I just keep gathering new documents without taking the time to analyze and benefit from them, I’ll constantly feel behind. That’s not how I want to feel about my genealogy research!

I’ve done a pretty good job of collecting military and pension files for some of my ancestors. I’m going to make processing them a priority. So far, here’s what I have:

  • Three Union Civil War pension files, which are various stage of processing, from almost complete to barely started
  • One Confederate Civil War pension file I have (from the Alabama archives)
  • A Civil War Compiled Service Record for one ancestor I downloaded years ago that I didn’t do much with
  • A newly acquired military record for my great grandfather’s service in the Philippine Insurrection

In addition to processing those documents, I’d like to continue systematically checking my source documentation.

If I focus on these resources I’ve already gathered through the end of the year, I feel like I can start 2017 with a sense of accomplishment and a fabulous to-do list of things to research. So much of the fun of genealogy research is the thrill of the hunt. But if I take the time to analyze the clues I find, the hunt will be even more thrilling.

Photo by walknboston via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Keeping my focus

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focusFrom the day I started doing genealogy research, I was overwhelmed by the possibilities. There were so many things to research, in so many places. Where do I start? How do I keep track of it all? How do I keep from going down a rabbit hole and losing track of my session goals? Sometimes I’d feel so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even start researching and I’d do something else.

Honestly, that feeling of overwhelm has been my overarching challenge all along. It’s why I started this blog, to try to help myself and others get past it. (That’s why my tag line is “Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots.”)

More than a dozen years into this hobby, I finally feeling like I’m getting past overwhelm. I’m happy to say that I’ve developed some strategies that are making me feel more focused and productive. Those feelings in turn help me enjoy doing the work more and consequently I stay motivated to do more research. It’s such a nice feeling that I thought I’d share with you what I’m doing, in the hopes that it might help you.

  1. I have a default project. Right now (and for the past few months and for at least the next few months) I’m systematically going through my sources from Reunion 11 (my family tree software). I’m up to Source 57 out of a current 380. Each session, I start with the next source on the list and I make sure I’ve thoroughly examined it, entered all the data found in it, followed up (or made a note of) clues contained within it, and attached an image as a multimedia file to the source. Oh and I make sure it’s reasonably well cited. So far I’ve seen lots of room for improvement when examining each source, so a single source might take as much as an hour to go through. Sometimes I can get a few sources done per session. The process has kept me very focused. Even so,  I often stumble upon new information and if I have time I’ll sometimes go off on a tangent for a bit. But because I’m checking off the sources one by one, I have a place to come back to.
  2. I have a goal for each session. When I sit down to research I ask myself, as I always have, what will I work on today? It’s the answer to that question that’s the key. If you know what you want to find out, you know where to start and you know where to end. If you have a goal in mind, you can bring yourself back to it if you find yourself heading down that rabbit hole. Knowing what you want to work on is everything. I can work on my sources project. Or I can work on something else, if I want. I just like knowing what I’m after today.
  3. I keep track of clues. In Evernote, I keep a list of clues and of things to explore. That helps me stay focused on my goal without worrying that I’ll forget about this tantalizing tidbit I’ve come across. Some days I don’t feel like going back to documenting my sources. Instead I start at my clue list.
  4. I write down next steps. At the end of any session, I make a note of next steps so I can pick up where I left off. Sometimes I’ll even set a reminder in Evernote so I can get excited first thing in the morning by the day’s new challenge. (I’m trying to put in at least a little research every morning.) This allows me to stop a session because  I know I can pick up the thread. And it allows me to start the next session because I know what I’m going to be working on. (And I’m usually anxious to get to it!)

One thing I know about myself is that I do better with fewer choices. So this approach has really helped get past the paralysis that too much choice can bring.  A year ago, I heard D. Joshua Taylor speak at the annual conference of the Genealogical Society of Southern Illinois. One of his talks was on time management and he was all about staying focused. Every now and then I read my summary of his time-management wisdom to remind me of the importance of focus.

What about you? Do you have any tips or tricks for staying focused that you’d like to share?

Photo by Mark Hunter via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.