Ways to say "No" in professional situations

Literary historian P. Gabrielle Foreman has this list. Wish I knew this many ways ten years ago!

Most Viewed MWM Posts December 2012

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made here during December.

And once again the top finisher ran well ahead of the pack: "We still need to understand that no single record is automatically correct or even trustworthy; they all need corroboration from other independently created records if we can possibly find them. We still need to understand how to analyze a single record and correlate it with other types. From this point of view 2013 looks very much like 1993 -- or, for that matter, 1893."

1. What Does It Mean to Be "Out of Date"? (December 13)

2. Perfectionism: Is The Best the Enemy? (December 31)

3. Overcommitted and Underperforming (December 7)

4.  Don't Ask Your 1820s Ancestor What His "Job" Was (December 27)

5.  Was That a Deadline I Just Missed? (December 28)


Least viewed:

Gems from New England (December 18)



Harold Henderson, "Most Viewed MWM Posts December 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 February 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Overcommitted and Underperforming

I'm beginning to figure out why many of the genealogy organizations I belong to don't get as much done as it seems like we could. We're all trying to do too much and spreading ourselves too thin, myself included. So when a deadline looms there's a flurry of activity, but in between things are pretty quiet.

Partly that's because what we really want and need to do is not attend committee meetings (even on line), but dig in the archives! And partly it's because we'd like to do more and are not very clear about how an additional commitment will affect our schedule. When a new commitment looks tempting but is not feasible or not on our must-do list, we need the information and the clear priorities to say "No" and make it stick. I know a few people who have both, but they are rare. I'm not one of them.

I've taken to asking what I will quit doing if I join this project or that committee. Usually I can't answer the question and sometimes I join anyway. Then I'm always in a hurry and often late. Is it possible that we would accomplish more if we tried to do less?



Harold Henderson, "Overcommitted and Underperforming," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Interruptions

Being able to focus on just one thing for half a day is an unusual luxury in my world, but it's often the most fun and most efficient way to work. Our work rarely lends itself to that arrangement -- and I'm talking just within the framework of genealogy itself, not even taking into account extraneous events like illnesses, car breakdowns, oven fires, kids' and parents' urgencies, and vacations. Any given project often has to be set aside because the next step involves a trip or waiting for someone else to make the trip, or because a closer deadline takes precedence.

I get so used to being interrupted that I find myself interrupting myself (to check email or Facebook or FamilySearch for new databases, if nothing else). This is rarely a good thing. How do you do interruption management?



Harold Henderson, "Interruptions," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Weekend Wonderings: Finished Yet?

All of us have calendars crowded with overlapping responsibilities and simultaneous deadlines. It's not just the kids, it's not just the clients (if any), it's not just our other jobs, it's not just our procrastination, and it's not necessarily ADD.

Few projects can be finished quickly without interruption even if we had no other demands in our lives. If the material is all local, there's probably too much of it. And usually some material is far away or even uncertain of existence -- so we have to wait for remote libraries or archives or researchers to come through, or for us to make the trip to them.

As a result we wind up with a goodly number of projects going at the same time. Then they start interfering with each other and some fall off the back of the desk. That plus our perfectionism leads to even longer delays. We work all the time, and nothing ever gets done!

I'm not sure that generic time-management programs (digital or otherwise) are a lot of help on this. Actually I'm not much help either, but here are three thoughts:

(1) Consider breaking your big family book project into article-sized pieces. As Tom Jones points out, their titles will be centrally indexed by PERSI, the Periodical Source Index, so cram in all the surnames you legally can. (Headquartered at the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, PERSI is also available via HeritageQuest through many local libraries.) The time management point is more milestones closer together allows us to see some "finished" work sooner, with the satisfaction and additional communication that entails.

(2) Any promised submission to a diligent editor or an insistent cousin can focus the mind wonderfully.

(3) Not to repeat myself, but the BCG certification process commits applicants to a deadline. Even with extensions, it forces us to finish some things. Irrespective of the outcome, that in itself is a good experience to have.

What other ideas have worked for you? Always traveling and never arriving is no fun. Give yourself the gift of some intermediate destinations. And think how happy those editors and cousins will be!


Harold Henderson, "Weekend Wonderings: Finished Yet?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 19 August 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]