Stay Focused: Creating Aims & Objectives for Genealogy

I’m taking the Society of Australian Genealogists Genealogy Methods course over the next 6 months, and I’ve already learned some really useful tricks. The course is being run by Danielle from Generations Genealogy, whose website I would recommend checking out.

Today I want to talk about one method I think will be helpful to MANY genealogists — especially those who get overwhelmed with the sheer volume of their research and what to do with it.

The New York Times newsroom 1942. WikiMedia.

We all have goals we want to accomplish with our research — they vary from person to person. But sometimes it can be a struggle to stay on task, keep focused, and complete the job you set for yourself. At least, I really struggle with that. I get easily distracted by the shiny object dangling in front of me, and I want to go off and chase it. Now, there's nothing wrong with occasionally diving down a rabbit hole — as long as we have a touchstone we can circle back around to.

That's where I think the aims and objectives method could be very helpful.

So what are aims? Aims are your big-level projects; they will be things you would work on for 12 months or more. It is not recommended that you have more than 4 aims at a time. Here are the aims I chose:

1. Audit my family tree & make it as accurate as possible.

2. Transfer my digital research over to software and hard copy.

3. Compile a list of stories/articles to publish on Substack.

4. In-depth exploration of my Edwards family in Chester at the turn of the century.

   
   

As you can see, these are goals that are going to take time, and you may notice they are quite broad. This is usually where I would have left my goal setting. Writing down these large aims and then running off to achieve them. I would always inevitably end up in the weeds, bogged down and feeling like I’m drowning. That’s where I believe the objectives part of this equation is going to be a game changer for me.

A Day in the Life of a Wartime Housewife- Everyday Life in London, England, 1941. WikiMedia

Objectives are things that sit underneath your aims. They are far more concise and focused, and they can be completed in shorter chunks and revised as necessary. I’m going to be working with aim number 1 (auditing my tree) to show you how I went about setting my objectives.

First, I clarified the scope of phase one of my audit. Here’s what I decided:

• Only do my pedigree ancestors (adding siblings with name and birth/death info if they came up — I will audit non-pedigree ancestors in a later phase).

• Stop at 4x great-grandparents.

• Prioritise researching my key surnames (Edwards, Morrow, Hooper & Roskam).

With that, my objectives become:

• Audit the paternal lines of my grandparents back to 4x great-grandfathers.

• Limit research time on each ancestor to no more than 5 hours (this is to stop me getting too bogged down in nitty-gritty details, which I tend to do. This audit is about making my tree healthier, not larger and more detailed; I can flag those with more research and return to them later).

• Utilise a simple research log to track findings (I am really bad for tracking my research and I’m sure I’ve wasted countless hours re-running searches).

• Fill in my paper-based group sheets/profiles and input info into RootsMagic as I go (which will simultaneously help me with my #2 aim).

• Flag 3-4 relatives in the audited lines whose stories are now well-evidenced enough to publish on Substack (helping with #3 aim).

I started using the method this week and have already found it to be conducive to staying on task. Yes, I have gotten a little pulled off course once or twice, but then I remember what my scope and objectives are and I am able to return back to that work.

How do you plan and set goals for your genealogy work? Do you think you will try the aims and objectives method? Let me know in the comments!

Want more genealogy methodology? Check out my FAN method case study.