Time to Organize Your Genealogy

I think a lot about organizing stuff, especially information. Books, magazines, papers, digital files. The stuff that piles up in tubs and boxes in my home office and my work office. The stuff that piles up in folders on my desktop computers and the many apps on my tablet and smartphone.

And it's not just the information that needs organizing. It's also my schedule, my to-do list, my goals and projects and tasks.  Sometimes I amaze myself that I was able to write a book last year, which just became available on Kindle today. No doubt if I had been even better organized and less stressed, the book could have been produced even sooner.  (And what about future books?)

But if you're reading this, you're probably more interested in your own organizational and productivity issues. I do like to talk about technology and methodology as they apply to genealogical research, but a big part of that now has to do with using technology to organize, and creating methods to organize.

I don't believe in New Year's Day resolutions, mainly for two reasons: You have to wait each year until January 1 to start them, and the idea is that you're going to do something for an entire year. I don't want to wait. And I can only work on small things at a time. 3 months, maybe?

So how will I be spending my time during the next 3 months? There's a research trip somewhere in there, which means getting ready for that. There's a bunch of new podcasts to prepare (The Genealogy Guys Podcast continues, and in between, new episodes of Genealogy Connection).  There's a new Patreon site to finish and promote. There's ongoing book promotion.

But I would really like to get back to my researching my own family (not just with the research trip). And I want to make better use of my DNA matches.

Let me leave you with an idea to help your own information overload, a clever little experiment I participated in during the past 5 days, and which I found fun and productive: Infomagical.  You can sign up at pretty much any time, and it begins the Monday after you sign up. Here's the link:

Infomagical

Go do it, and a week from now, tell me what you thought about it.