Make Your Genealogy Life Easier with These 3 Strategies

I get it...genealogy research can be overwhelming. We have a gazillion ancestors that we want to do proud by learning about their lives and sharing their stories. But, we only have so much time in our busy lives to dedicate to our genealogy endeavor. So how can we find a balance that allows us to do research without getting overwhelmed by it? In this article I’ll share with you the top three ways I ditch the overwhelm and make my research sessions more productive, even if I only have a few minutes here and there.

Background

I want to explain why these strategies are important to me and why I needed to put them in place. I don’t like to broadcast this, but I have a few different chronic health issues that impact my daily life. I only have a limited amount of time in a day to get anything done, and between running a business and a household, I don’t have a lot of time left over for much else. Years ago when I’d sit down to work on my genealogy in my “free” time, I found that I was wasting time re-acclimating myself with a project, repeating searches, finding (and ordering!) the same records over and over again, and ultimately becoming overwhelmed and frustrated, which is not good for my health. Working in this manner was not a productive use of my very limited time and I knew I had to find a better way to make the most of that short amount of research time. And once I had figured out how to make my genealogy life easier, I was able to get a lot of work done in less time.

I wanted to share this because I want you to know where I’m coming from, as I suspect you may be in the same or similar boat, at least when it comes to the limited time factor. I hope you find these strategies helpful, and, if you follow through on them, I promise it will make a world of difference.

#1 Process

First and foremost, I have a process that I follow so I do the same thing every time on every project. This saves me so much time and energy. And, the repetitive nature allows me to stay on track when working on a project. Otherwise, I’d be back to my old habits of chasing bright shiny objects and getting lost in those darn rabbit holes. These detours take me away from the project at hand and drain me of energy.

It took a few years of tweaking to get the process to a point where it’s easy to remember and easy to follow. More importantly, my process allows me to work smarter, not harder, saving me valuable time and energy. This process is essentially my problem-solving framework because I primarily used it to work through brick walls, but now I actually use it for all of my projects.

#2 Organization

Next up, organization. I consider myself a highly organized person. I like things in a certain place, arranged in a way that makes sense to me so I can find the things I need in a matter of seconds. Sometimes I get a little lazy and end up with a to-file pile (both paper and digital files). And if I have to waste time searching through that paper pile or catch-all digital file folder, I immediately set aside time to get that stuff put in its proper place. Having everything in its place saves time during a research session because I can find what I’m looking for quickly and easily. Plus, it’s less overwhelming when you know exactly where to look among the massive paper and digital files that we amass as genealogists. If you’d like to learn about how I organize my digital files, you can check out my blog post Digital File Organization for Genealogy. For my paper filing system, I follow Mary Hill’s FamilyRoots Organizer system.

#3 Plan

And finally, I think it’s extremely important to plan out your research. Haphazardly wandering around online or in a library or archives is not a productive use of our genealogy research time. Remember those bright shiny objects and rabbit holes I mentioned earlier? These detours are inevitable without focused research. And, I promise you—the more time you spend up front planning your research, the more time you’ll save overall. I’ve actually been tracking all of my time for ten years, and I’ve been able to determine this is true based on the data I collected before the days of using a research plan compared to how I operate now.

Having a research plan will help you focus on your specific research question, and it allows you to be effective and efficient in your research efforts. If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m all about making things easier and saving as much time as possible. Without these two tenets, I wouldn’t make any progress on any of my research projects.

Another benefit of having a research plan is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time reviewing your work to figure out what to do next—you’ve already mapped out your next steps so you can pick up where you left off with ease.

My research plan also doubles as my research log, so I’m recording my findings as I go, which helps keep me organized and saves me time later on when it comes to evaluating and analyzing my research.

I truly believe that using research plans is so important, that I decided to bring back my Research Planning Magic mini-course, which is designed to walk you through building an actionable research plan. If you’re interest, you can sign up on the wait list to be notified when it becomes available (🤞 hopefully in April after I make a few tweaks to it).

Recap

So to recap, we’ve covered three ways you can make your genealogy life easier. First, follow some sort of process so the work you do on each project is consistent. Second, get your digital files and paper files organized so you can quickly and easily find what you’re looking for in a matter of seconds, not minutes (or heaven forbid, hours!). And finally, start utilizing research plans so you can determine what needs to be done and essentially stay focused on the project at hand in order to make progress.

Now, I don’t expect you to try and implement all three of these strategies at the same time, because, well, that’s going to be a little overwhelming. My advice: start with one, then add another, then add in the final one. To choose your first strategy, think about the way you research now and the struggles you encounter. Which of the strategies will help you improve your research right away? That’s the one you should start with. Take a moment to think it through, and then let me know which one you’re starting with and why (you can use the messaging feature in the bottom-right corner of this page). I look forward to hearing from you!

I hope you enjoyed this article and that you’re ready to try at least one of these strategies to make your genealogy life a little easier. If you found this helpful, be sure to add the Genealogy In Action blog to your favorite RSS reader.

© Julie Tarr. This article was first published at Genealogy In Action; appearance of this article elsewhere, without my permission, violates copyright.