Smaller goals work better for me

One of the things I constantly beat myself up about is that I don’t really keep up with my genealogy resolutions each year. I’m going to try something a little new, a little smaller. I tend to take on too much and then get overwhelmed. It’s time to change my patterns and see if I can’t find a more productive way of getting things done. The way I’m going to try and do this is to think outside the box. I’m no longer going to think in terms of multiple monthly or yearly goals. I’ve got to start focusing on just one thing at a time.

The first goal I’m going to work to complete, is actually a month long goal but there is a reason! My 3rd blogiversary is coming up on March 13th. So that’s my deadline date.

Feb 2012 Pedigree
Feb 2012 Pedigree – done through Hannah Carter.

 

In the year since I last showed my pedigree (I think), I’ve added a ton of information into my tree. I’ve gone from 1031 sourced individuals to 2276! Though some of those might not be sourced yet. I learned with the large Taylor families, it was more productive to add in all the children of a couple and proceed from there. So there are probably a few un-sourced children in there… No I won’t say un-sourced, they all have the source citation for my Taylor Family Tree Outline where I’ve gotten the names. Luckily for me Ancestry.com has a ton of Kentucky Vital Records online. So it’s really easy to make sure that I’ve got good names and dates.

2013 Pedigree
2013 Pedigree

Onto the blogiversary goal. While I want to promise I’ll have a brand spankin’ new site design, I’m not stupid enough to promise that! Learned my lesson! Between February 2012 and February 2013, I finished work through 4 more of my 3rd Great Grandparents. Hopefully, if I work hard I will get the final two that will finish up the Taylor line of my tree. Not that there’s much information on that Applegate line to enter, but I’ve done that one all by myself without the aid of a big written out tree like some of the rest!

Once I’ve gotten this goal finished, I’ll focus on a new one!

New Goals for 2012

After the very emotional 2 weeks I’ve had, I’m sitting down now to re-assess my situation. It’s been very hard adjusting to my “new normal”. So much of my day is just empty now. That means I’ve got to find other ways to fill it. So here’s some additional goals for myself in addition to my 2012 Genealogy Goals.

  1. Blog Re-Design. Boy did I drop the ball on this one so far. It’s such a cop out to say, “I’ve been busy.” It’s what I have though. Now that Grandpa isn’t here for me to care for, I have to dedicate myself back to my website. It’s part of my genealogy passion and now I need to re-discover it. There are a couple of questions I’ve gotten in the last few weeks about this, so I’ll try and address those as soon as I can formulate educated, accurate responses. Remember I’m not a coder by trade, just by self learning! So I don’t want to lead you wrong. Part of my re-design is also to overhaul my tags and categories on the blog. I’ve racked up quite a bit of content here, so I just want to be able to access it better. Hopefully a new organization method and the new design can work together to do this.
  2. Quilting is something I discovered the year before Grandpa moved here and just like my website, I found it hard to find time to do it. So while I still have a lot of household responsibilities that take up my time, I’m hoping to work out a way to make some quilts for sale (a new venture for me!) and get my website time in. Grandpa had even given me a tremendous idea the day before he passed away and I really want to make that happen.
  3. Exercising. This one is the toughest. I’ve been averaging about 3 days a week since the end of January on the treadmill. I want to get it to 5 days a week until my weight comes down. I gained a little bit back the last two weeks, so I have to make up for that by being extra diligent. I’m hoping to get this done first thing in the morning before everything else steamrolls on me, so that I won’t have any excuses to back out!
  4. Organizing. I’m actually planning a re-organization of my whole life if you get down to it. Everything from how I spend my time and money to my work area. I’ve planned a renovation for my work space to hopefully make it more efficient. I even have my Dad custom building the desk/bookcases. So plenty of room for my genealogy and coding books! Finally!
  5. COMMUNICATION. This is the biggest improvement I hope to make. To be quite honest, I had been pulling away from the computer the last few months. I don’t know if I subconsciously had a feeling that I didn’t have much time left with Grandpa, or I didn’t notice how his condition was getting worse because I was so close to it. Whatever the reason or purpose, it happened. I got behind on e-mails and commenting back. I sincerely apologize for that. Part of my new methods will be to keep a calendar (in my Genealogy Binder maybe), of my month so that I have days set aside just for taking care of correspondence. It’s such a huge part of genealogy and I miss it! There are tons of family connections I want to make in the coming months! So expect me to try and be on the website more and on Twitter. I’m still not sure about maintaining a FaceBook. I cut a lot of drama out of my life when I de-activated that, so I’m still trying to decide what’s best there.

I know these are not all related to genealogy but since I plan to spend so much time on here in the future, I want to get my goals down where they’ll be easy for me to find and re-visit. Not to mention the sign I plan to make myself and hang above my new desk (when it’s made that is).

Now I’m going to share some Instagram pictures I post to my Twitter this week when I was feeling pretty emotional about Grandpa. These picture were taken with my phone, so that is why they look a bit tilted.

Keeping my blogging on track

One of the things I resolved to improve this year was my blogging. I’m not going to get upset if I’m not able to blog three times a week (Tues, Thurs, Sat/Sun). However, I’ve taken steps to keep myself motivated.

I’ve started a list of “blog ideas”. Sometimes I get blog ideas in the middle of washing the breakfast dishes in the morning. Sometimes it’s while I’m folding the third load of endless laundry. It seems so simple to keep a list but for some reason I’ve never done it. I guess I just assumed my memory would come back as soon as I sat down at the computer to type. Boy am I optimistic!

The list has already served me well, because I can judge how my mood and time will effect each of these ideas. When I get some free time, I can start to research or gather the information I’ll need for each entry. If I find myself with a lot of time on my hands (in my dreams?), then I can start writing the posts in WordPress, and just save them and add to them as my week progresses.

It’s funny how much the idea of free time fluctuates in a busy household. I found myself home alone for the first time in months the other day. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to do with all this time. So I kind of squandered it watching a DVR’d episodes of Real Housewives of Beverley Hills. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I feel like if I had consulted my list, I would have accomplished much more! I would have had no interruptions! That would have been the perfect writing time.

I know better now. I’ve learned my weaknesses. Like the one where I’d rather watch Bravo then do laundry, dishes, or be productive. So my personal goal, on top of my genealogy/website ones, is to be more disciplined in how I spend my time.

Genealogy Goals for 2012

Now that I’ve owned up to how I went wrong last year, it’s time to set some new goals for the upcoming year!

Genealogy File Goals

  1. I want to finally finish getting everyone added into my new, cleaner family file. I’m so close now I can see the finish line!
  2. Get everything in the ‘To Be Sorted’ folder, sorted into place or added into a ‘Maybe’ folder for those that no longer fit into my family file due to the cleaner nature.
  3. Put together a To Do List for the people in my family file. RootsMagic has a great new Research Log feature I want to utilize and I also want to use the To Do List features in both RootsMagic and FTM2012.

Record Ordering Goals

  1. How many records I order depends on how well I budget through the year, so I won’t set a specific number. Really as long as I make forward progress in my research, the number isn’t important. So I will just say I want to make a list of records I’d like to order and where I need to order them from. There’s a great place for this in the new RootsMagic update.

Website Goals

  1. Finish the new website design. I have to finish the new website design. I have no problem with the current design but I would like a little more color on my blog. So I’m going to finally sit down and finish the design… or start it again would be more accurate.
  2. Make sure the sources on the website are more accurate.

Blogging Goals

  1. I’ve been very good about getting my Diary of Llewellyn posts done but I need to fit regular blogging into my new schedule. So I want to at least have 3 non-Diary blogs a week. Maybe two blogs during the week and one on the weekends when I have a little more time.

How I did with my Yearly Goals

It’s now time to face my music. I didn’t get as far on my yearly goals as I would have liked. My life turned a little upside down this year and threw me off balance. That’s alright though, I’m learning how life throws you a few punches every once and awhile and I’m definitely back on my feet again… I think!

Personal Genealogy Files Goals

  • I want to finally finish re-organizing my ‘To Be Sorted’ folders on my second hard drive. Right now I have a folder of Mays photos, a folder of Moore photos, a folder of scanned photos and a folder of tombstones to be sorted into my 2010 filing system. (Hopefully it’s my final filing system!)

Well, sorry to say I still have things in my To Be Sorted folders. The good news is most of it is for the side of the family I haven’t finished verifying yet. I don’t have ID numbers created for them yet, so they aren’t going into sorted folders yet. I do get bursts of energy to sort through these files every once and awhile but I need to make more of an effort to double check them as I go.

  • I want to have the whole Mays side of my family entered into my website and both FTM and RootsMagic. This is a big feat, since I’m behind on my RootsMagic work and there are a lot of Mays family members.
I am nowhere near finished with the Mays side of my family.  I’m getting there though. There were a lot of 10-15 children families to hash out, so it’s coming along, albeit slowly.

Online Genealogy Goals

  • Order at least 4 microfilm from the Family History Center. I’m hoping for one a quarter. I keep talking myself out of it because I want to get the most bang for my buck, so to speak. Enough of that! Time to get on with it!
I haven’t ordered any, this will still be a goal in the new year! It’s just been so hard to get out this year and get much done, but hopefully next year will be better.

Record Ordering Goals

  • I want to obtain the marriage certificate for William and Llewellyn. (I have notations of the date in Llewellyn’s records and a newspaper announcement, but I would like a copy of the actual certificate)
  • I would like to find the death certificate of Robert J Moore. (Brooklyn has no record of his death in 1925, so my next search would be Caldwell, NJ)
  • I have a copy of Llewellyn‘s birth certificate but it might be in New York at my Aunt Diane’s house. I’ll have to ask Uncle Chris about it in July.
  • Order death certificates for Lewis and Jennie Thorward.
I was short on genealogy funds this year and was only able to order the marriage record for George Yohn/Thorward and Josephine Doremus and the death record for John Menzies from the New Jersey and New York State Archives.

General Goals

  • BE MORE ORGANIZED! I ordered a copy of Elyse Doerflinger‘s Conquering the Paper Monster ebook and I plan to put it to use in the new year! With all that’s been going on in the last few months, I just haven’t had the time to touch my archives. I’m usually very good about starting and finishing big projects, it’s just I need a guideline sometimes.
I am MUCH more organized, I actually went through and organized all of my papers. I even wrote about it in a few posts: here. The only job left is scanning in my photos and organizing them but I plan to accomplish that slowly.

Website Goals

  • Don’t break the site! I’ve had a horrible habit of breaking the genealogy software on my website. Usually because I mess around with it too much. I think I’ve learned enough through trial and horrible errors to successfully keep this goal!

The website isn’t broken! I’ve been working on a new design for over a year, but haven’t had a lot of time to devote to it, so I credit that with the great luck. The new design will hopefully get done this year for sure. With easier to read text and better organization of the site!

Hopefully, I can think of some challenging, attainable goals for the next year!