Did You Complete All the Steps? A Genealogical Checklist – Juliana Smith The school year was off to a rough start. It seems over the summer, we forgot our homework regimen. It's not that my daughter doesn't do her homework. She knows that it gets done as soon as she gets home, before games TV, or any other extracurricular activities. The problem was that she never quite completed all the steps. The homework never seemed to make it into her backpack. Forms weren't getting signed and before school there was much trauma as we searched for library books, errant homework pages, assignment books, etc. After several weeks of “extreme nagging” on my part and some rough mornings, I decided that she needed a checklist. I included every step she needed to take, from doing ALL her homework, to having her packed backpack ready and sitting next to the front door, ready to be grabbed on her way out. At first it was tough to get her to use the checklist, but after dire threats as to the loss of TV and game privileges, she gave in and began checking off items as she went along. After a while, she got herself in the habit of doing all the things she needed to, and the checklist became an afterthought. One day as I congratulated myself on this ingenious solution, I walked into my office and began pondering how this technique might help me with my genealogy organizational challenges. Although I've made great strides in recent years as far as organizing my family history, I still run into trouble with those dreaded piles that seem to accumulate. Since life rarely stands still long enough for me to locate a record and complete all the steps I need to take to properly document my finds and incorporate them into my research, I usually end up with new finds accumulating on my desk. If it were just a case of needing to be filed, I could probably zip right through the piles. The trouble is, when I finally get to finishing up all the steps, I have forgotten where I'm at as far as processing that information. For remainder of article: http://shorl.com/gotrahunibrila Patriotic people VOTE ! Sally Rolls Pavia Sun City, Arizona sallypavia2001@yahoo.com List Owner: GENEALOGYBITSANDPIECES-L-request@rootsweb.com Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/GENEALOGYBITSANDPIECES "All incoming and outgoing email checked by Norton Anti-Virus"