| Organizing for Success in the New Year |
| If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to work on your family history research, getting materials you have in order will set you up for success throughout the year. Getting organized can be a daunting task, especially if you've been researching for a while and you've amassed mountains of paper and digital files. To make things seem more manageable, you might consider tackling one genealogy organization project at a time. Here are three projects that I would recommend to set you up for success in 2023. 1. Get rid of things you don’t need. As you sort through your collection of genealogy materials you will likely find lunch receipts, to-do lists, empty notebooks, flyers for events that you didn’t attend, old software manuals, and more. These are items that you don’t need and you should feel free to toss. Tossing out this type of clutter will enable you to focus on actual research documents and materials. 2. Develop a plan for how to name and store files, both physical and digital. After you make your plan, be sure to write it down and keep it somewhere accessible. This will help keep you organized and reduce decision fatigue, because you won't have to repeatedly decide how to name newly downloaded materials (like census images), plus you'll always know where to find them. 3. Go Digital. Digital documents have the benefit being easily stored and easily shared. Additionally, organizing your research on your computer with genealogy software can help you keep track of your research and what documents you have. If you're looking to double down and get organized once and for all, you'll want to join us for our brand new workshop, GenealogyBreakthrough: Organize with Purpose. In this workshop we will not only guide you through the sorting, digitizing and filing processes, we'll also show you how to analyze your newly organized material and make research plans for 2023. |
