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| No time for a genealogy marathon? Commit to one family tree project and tackle it in sprints. |
As I hope you noticed, I haven't publish a new genealogy article for the last two weeks. I had to travel to help my parents move, and after that was Christmas. But the visit gave seven of us COVID-19, so there was no Christmas.
Did I put the brakes on my family tree progress during that time? Well, helping my parents move was beyond exhausting, so I had no time for genealogy. But COVID has only slowed me down a bit. As sick as I am, I've spent at least a half-day every day adding people and source citations to my family tree. It helps keep my mind off my symptoms.
My overwhelming project in 2024 has been to create thousands of source citations I'd left out. I used Family Tree Analyzer to create a spreadsheet of everyone in my family tree who had no citations at all. My tree has 83,000 people, and I still have 62,000 people with no citations. That's embarrassing.
But I know why I skipped them in the past. I have easy access to the vital records for my Italian nationals. I knew I could go back at any time and create the source citations. But yikes! I went too far.
Because this project seems as if it'll take a few years, I need to liven things up sometimes. Instead of working my way down the list, I jump on opportunities.
When a man contacted me on Ancestry about his ancestors in my family tree, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I added missing source citations to his people and crossed them off my citation to-do list.
I haven't found a cousin connection for the two of us, but his people are from my 2nd great grandmother's hometown. Long ago I downloaded all the available vital records for the town to my computer. (These mass-downloads are no longer easy to do. Websites block any attempts.) Then I renamed each of the more than 12,000 documents to make them easy to search on my computer.
I built out all my closest families from the town, and I completed their source citations. But I have a lot more families to build. With a bit of luck, I may find my connection to the man who contacted me.
Channel Your Energy into One Important Project
I know you aren't all as lucky as I am—able to spend several hours a day knee-deep in genealogy. But if you focus on one project that's important to you, you can make progress in smaller amounts of time.
If you had to choose one genealogy project that's important to you, what would it be? Here are some ideas to get you thinking:
- creating source citations
- finding more vital records
- gathering military documents
- downloading missing census records
- searching for newspaper articles
- finding a very important missing branch
- organizing your documents
- scanning your family photos
- creating a Book of Life
Imagine you've chosen that one project, and you're committed to spending a little bit of time on it every day you can. After a short time you can make measurable progress! In my half-days last week, I added more than 100 new people with source citations, and made new family connections.
What's your top-priority genealogy project for 2025? Now, is it time for another dose of medicine yet?
DiAnn, take very good care of yourself as you improve. Slow and easy, lots of liquids and quality sleep as you well know will set you up for real recovery, no relapses. Love your half day approach - best for us A types. Your genealogy quickie list is perfect starter! Blessings in the New Year!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Cassie. As someone who is driven to accomplish big things every day, feeling so run down is the worst. Seven of us got COVID, one had no symptoms at all (my 93-year-old mother), and I think I'm the last one still sick. But I have been whittling away at my missing source citations list for almost 4 hours already today.
DeleteSo sorry you have been ill! But, it sounds like you are still making great headway. I love FTA! Hopefully others will be encouraged by your experience to try it too. Happy new year and a full recovery.
ReplyDeletePriscilla
This is my 2nd round of COVID. The 1st time I was stuck in bed a lot. Thankfully I can stay parked at my desk this time around and get stuff done!
DeleteHappy New Year DiAnn hope you guys feel better soon! I'm a retired Technical Services librarian and you and I have talked in the past . I kind of love Database clean up projects and I'm working right now on missing death dates /places and I'm to the "P" yeah me! But we had an old library cataloger adage "touch a record once " Decide what you project/projects are (like DiAnn did with sources) and every single record you touch during the year doing your other genealogical research make sure you also fix those record sources. You'll be surprised how many you will "accidentally fix" as you go along. That is if you aren't like DiAnn and I and love trudging through a list of 1,000s of records on a record clean-up project that will take years! The death dates on my 37k ged has gone pretty quickly I'm at 8 months! Thanks DiAnn for your great blog this year and Happy New Year! ** doing these clean- up project REALLY improves your *hints in Ancestry, Family Search and MyHeritage --the now AI powered search mechanism have more information to do automated searches and produce more and better hints. You might solve that brick wall too!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I'm a big fan of "touch a record once," but I think I've been using a phrase I came up with in my first house as an adult. "All the way away." Like, don't just make a pile of things that need to go upstairs. Put them all the way away and be done with it! In this case, find and cite everything for this person now, before you move on to anything else. Put them all the way away.
DeleteSorry wasn't logged in as me in previous comment - Happy New Year from Arkansas !
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year from New York!
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