Do-Over or in my case Go-Over, Cycle 2 end of week 1

In review, this weeks topics were: 1) Setting Previous Research Aside, 2) Preparing to Research, and 3) Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines

Wow! What a week! Here is what I got accomplished:

Topic 1) Setting Previous Research Aside
 Over the past week I made the decision that I am going to do a Go-Over instead of a Do-Over and am hoping this is the right decision for me - we will see.  In the case of some of my ancestor files, I may need to dump what I have  - but in other files I have solid documentation and don't want to redo. I did upgrade to from Rootsmagic4 to Rootsmagic7 and then proceeded to color code all of my entries in red - as I go over a family file, I will then change the color.

Topic 2) Preparing to Research
 One of the first things I did was figure out how I wanted to organize my digital files, including how to label digital documents,  and I hope my new system will work for me.  I also set up notebooks in Onenote, they may still need some tweaking, as I am fairly new to the program. Not surprisingly, my habit of procrastination and disorganization extends to my genealogy hobby - I spent hours emptying the genealogy folder in my email inbox and moving items to the proper surname folder.  I also gathered up all my miscellaneous paper documents and notes that had not yet been filed and put them in the proper files. I previously had reorganized my paper files and, so far, am happy with them. I am leaning towards using Thomas MacEntee's excel research log.  Using any log will be a challenge for me and I definitely need to form some new, better, habits. I backed up my laptop to my external hard drive and tonight I opened a dropbox account, which I need to learn how to use.

Topic 3)Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines

This week, I started with my file on my husband and myself, scanned all of the documents that I have, updated our file in Rootsmagic and made sure all of the citations were included.  I wrote the citations on the front side of my paper copies. I still need to figure out the most reasonable way to digitize our negatives and slides.

Hopefully, the hours I spent on organizing things will help me proceed in a more efficient manner.  Although, I still have to fight not to follow the BSO (Bright Shiny Objects) and stay focused.  I was only able to go through mine and my husbands family file this week but hope to work through at both of our parents files next week. Overall, I would call it a successful week.