I have been very busy the past few weeks so I haven’t gotten much accomplished on my genealogy.  I have however made a few changes in my life which I hope will allow me to have more time for my genealogy research .

The first of the changes I have made believe it or not was to get a new phone.  The new phone is allowing me to be amazingly more productive! For instance,  I am writing this blog post on my phone.  I have also been able to convert my to do list and notetaking to my phone so that I will have all my notes and information with me wherever I am.  I have only had the phone a few days but it has made a tremendous difference in that short time!

I have also went back to using Gtd as my method of keeping organized.  This method combined with my success in getting everything into my phone will allow me to know that I am getting done what needs to be done and to stop thinking all the time about everything that I need to get done.  I will know it is in my gtd system and will come up and remind me to get it done on time so I don’t have to keep my mind busy reminding myself of all the things I need to get done.

I have also decided to become a mostly paperless genealogist.  I am starting to get everything scanned into my computer.  Once that is done, our rather as I get sectioned of it done, I will be able to get rid of some of the huge stacks of paper I have for my genealogy.  I will not be going completely paperless because there are some original documents I will of course want to keep so that other family members can see them in their original form.  I will be taking the original or professional prints of the photos and getting them put into scrapbooks so that they can be enjoyed instead of just sitting around in a bunch of boxes gathering dust.

I am also working on becoming as paperless as possible in other areas of my life.  I am trying to convert as much of my notetaking as I can on my phone and only putting things on paper when I really need to have a paper copy for some reason.

Finally, I am trying to use cloud computing methods more because they will allow me more flexibility in where and when I do things.  I can do most of my tasks on the go now with my phone!!!! I am using some cloud storage drives, google for my email, calendar, and part of my cloud computing and paperless plans.  I use remember the milk for my tasks system.   I am trying to convert even my reading habits to be cloud based.  I am so tired of trying to find the book I want to reread and when I do finally find it realizing I no longer have the time to read because it took all my time to find the book!  With the two reader apps on my phone, finding my books won’t be a problem anymore, at least not for the books I buy in ebook format.

To assist in the paperless and cloud computing goals, I am also changing back to Family Tree Maker from Ancestry.com.  It allows me to work on my genealogy from any computer with a browser and lets me even work on it to a limited degree on my phone through the android app.

Genealogy updates should be coming in next weeks post!

Kellie