Make Progress with a Guilt-Free Genealogy Task-a-Day Calendar

What day is it? Genealogy day!

Your family tree hobby started out so fun. You were filling in great grandparents and finding them in the census. You were adding great aunts and great uncles you never met.

Then your fun little hobby got serious. And time-consuming.

The "serious" part is wonderful. My reason for writing this blog is to inspire every family tree researcher to do the best job possible.

But that "time-consuming" part is not as wonderful. It keeps us from doing our best. And maybe it makes us feel a little guilty for leaving so many tasks unfinished.

I have a suggestion that can help you make noticeable progress and put an end to any feelings of guilt.

First let's think about all the tasks you wish you could do throughout your family tree, such as:

• Adding a portrait photo to each person
• Giving a well-formatted citation to each fact
• Gathering every available census for every person
• Using a consistent format for each place name

Next, think about your research materials outside of your family tree. You have files and folders, and maybe binders and books and catalogs and recordings and photo albums. They all need organization, scanning and analyzing.

When you have time for genealogy,
a task calendar can help you focus.

Now, how can you make good progress on all these different tasks without feeling like the job is too big to manage? A Genealogy Task-a-Day Calendar™.

You don't have time for family tree work every day—I'm not suggesting that.

This is a calendar with days, but no dates. Picture a Page-a-Day calendar that you place on your desk, peeling off one sheet of paper for each day of the year. But your Genealogy Task-a-Day Calendar has no specific day of the year assigned to each sheet of paper.

Instead, it's a sheet for each day that you have some time to spend working on your tree. You sit down to work, and the Genealogy Task-a-Day Calendar tells you that today's task is to scan your photos.

It doesn't say you have to finish all your scanning. But that's your focus this day.

The next day you have time, the next sheet of the Genealogy Task-a-Day Calendar tells you to find all the family tree facts with no citation.

Maybe the next day you'll be searching for those missing census forms.

You can make yourself an electronic Genealogy Task-a-Day Calendar—which is totally something I would do—or you can make one using a small, spiral-bound notebook, or a sticky notepad.

Each time you use the calendar, you'll be working on your assigned task. That should erase any guilt you may feel for not having everything done and perfect.

You're working on it! Cut yourself a break.

If getting organized turns you on:

• Where Did I Find This?
• How To Run Your Genealogy Research Like Clockwork
• Work in Batches to Strengthen Your Family Tree

Free Resource Lets You Plot Family Tree Locations

A few months ago I explained how you can add locations to Google Maps and save them in your own personal collection.

I use these collections to plot my relatives' homes in Italy, the landmarks I can see from my mountaintop home, and the many places I've lived.

You can use Google My Maps 
for genealogy.

Google's mapping features can come in handy to family tree researchers like us.

If you don't have a Google account, create one. It's free and gives you access to far too many tools to ignore. Once logged in, go to Google My Maps and click the red button to Create a New Map.

You can start adding addresses and adding a description to each map pin. You can color-code your map pins, maybe choosing different pin colors for different branches of your family tree.

Create different layers and you can separate the locations by family unit.

Google offers plenty of help explaining how to:

• Create, open, or delete a map
• Add places to your map
• Save directions on My Maps
• Draw lines and shapes in My Maps
• Import map features from a file

That last feature could be a tremendous help for your family tree research. You can use your family tree software to create a report on all the addresses in your tree. Then copy those addresses into a spreadsheet. Finally, import the locations into your map.

My original thought was to create a migration map for some of my ancestors. Google My Maps can do that. I've added my grandfather's addresses to a map. I've detailed each map pin with his name and the year(s) he lived there.

This fully customizable, full-featured map highlights my grandfather's travels within the United States.

Now I can use Google My Maps to draw lines showing his progression through time. In this image, instead of drawing a straight line, I used driving instructions. This makes a more realistic picture of Grandpa's path from his uncle's home in Newton, Massachusetts, to the coal mine in New Castle, Pennsylvania.

I've only scratched the surface here. Imagine creating a detailed map to include in your family tree research.

UPDATE: I did a test of importing an Excel file of addresses into a map. You can import only 200 addresses at a time. Add a header row called Address. It worked well. See the "Import test" layer. Now I can customize these new map pins as desired.

And speaking of maps:

• How to Visit Your Ancestral Hometown at Your Desk
• What if There's No There There?
• Case Study on 'What if There's No There There?'

How to Increase the Value of Your Family Tree Images

As a long-time computer professional, I'm embarrassed that I didn't learn this till today.

You can add custom details and descriptions to any JPG file on your computer. Your customizations will stay with the file when you copy, move or share it.

The biggest benefit to customizing your image files' details may be this:

You can search for your customized description in a huge folder of images and quickly find the file you need.

You can rename your images as needed.

I have thousands of downloaded vital records from the Italian Antenati website. As I go through them, I like to rename some of the files to include the name of the subject. If it's a close ancestor, I might include "my 4GA" (my fourth Great Aunt) in the file name. But now I can get more specific—especially with those direct ancestors.

This works on Windows or Macintosh. In Windows 10, right-click the image and choose Properties. Then click the Details tab. Many of the fields are editable. I never thought to check that before!

The Description and Origin sections are editable.

For Windows 7 instructions, see this short tutorial. For Mac users, see these instructions.

Before diving into this project, I'm going to decide on a set of standards. What might I want to search for? Which details are most important? My first thoughts are:

• Person's name, year, and type of record (for example, Libera Pilla 1882 birth record)
• The person's relationship to me (for example, my great grandmother, or my paternal grandfather's mother)
• Which town the record comes from and the type of record (for example, Colle Sannita; birth record)
• The URL of the original image and the name of the source

I'd recommend giving lots of thought to your own set of standards. Then start with the images that are most important to you. I'll start with wedding photos and my closest relatives' vital records.

Searching is easy with customized descriptions.

Ironically, this tip is the solution to the problem I was having when I stumbled upon it. I wanted to find my great grandmother's birth record to send to my cousin. I couldn't remember her year of birth, and I didn't want to wait for Family Tree Maker to open. So I tried looking in several folders without success. I finally opened my tree on Ancestry.com and found the correct year. Then I happened to click on the image's properties and discover I could edit them!

Now a quick search for my great grandmother's name and "birth record" brings up the right image.

How will image details make your family tree research a bit easier?

Bonus: Select multiple images and edit their details at once.

You may also enjoy:

• O Brother Where Art Thou?
• How To Read a Free-form Italian Death Record
• What To Do When You Have No Birth or Death Record