Genealogy Tasks for When You’re Not at 100%

The past week has been challenging. I've had a nasty winter cold, and my brain has felt as fuzzy as an unsheared sheep. It's been hard to focus on even the most basic of hints. Taking a trip into the genealogical void, where time ceases to exist and hours pass in the blink of an eye hasn't been a viable option. Nonetheless, I still tried to be at least a little bit productive. I've seen a few forum posts recently where people ask how to stay motivated, looking for ideas on what others do to get past the dry spell when research seems to be too much.

Here are some of the things I did manage to do this week, even though I was operating at less than 100%:

• Read more blog posts than I usually do. 
• Interacted on forums, answering questions for users and offering suggestions as appropriate.
• Updated my Feedly. I was at the 100 follow limit for free accounts, so I removed inactive or unreachable feeds, making way for a few new additions.
• Updated my Blogs to Follow page with some new sites (including podcast sites, even though I don't personally care for podcasts.). Even when older sites become inactive, I like to keep the links. Genealogy is "evergreen". It stays relevant, even over time. History doesn't change. Time tested methods still work. Great ideas are still great ideas! Sure, there may be specific articles and posts no longer up to date (especially with regard to software and technology, since they change at warp speed), but many posts stand the test of time. The list is simply alphabetical, new additions aren't identified. It's merely a reference list for those who may be looking for additional blogs to follow. (If you ever encounter a broken link on this page, please let me know!)
• Rummaged through the bins of treasures from cleaning out my parents house. I had an unusual photo I distinctly remembered bringing home, but for some reason, I hadn't saved it in the same bin as many of the photo albums. Truth be told, my mom had photos tucked all over the house, and I now have loose photos and albums scattered across many bins (not including my own personal hoard). I did ultimately find the item I was after. And, it lead me to post on Threads for opinions on vintage photography techniques. I'll save the story for a post in the near future. Suffice it to say, I not only learned something new, but now I'm on a hunt for more information about the subjects of the photo. 
• Spent far too much time trying to figure out why my default Blogger share buttons (shown at the bottom of each of my posts) only showed in grey unless you hovered over them. I considered other types of sharing buttons, but after much Googling (and even attempting to have AI assist me), I finally found an old post on Blogger Tips Pro with exactly the instructions I needed. (See! Evergreen!) It actually turned out to be very straightforward and extremely simple, written for the exact issue I was having.
• Removed broken image link in my blog sidebar. 
• Spent time on Ancestry, under Memories and "Organize your people", tagging subjects in saved photos. While this certainly isn't something I feel compelled to do on any kind of regular basis, it was still useful. In theory, this should help Ancestry's AI become better at recognizing faces. I haven't yet tried the "Search by face" feature, but if I do in the future, having people tagged will likely improve accuracy of those results.
• Registered for an AI beta (Prompt Cowboy.ai) designed to help write better prompts.
• Took time to review my Ancestry year in review. I always enjoy this! I viewed over 12,000 hints and added over 330 people to my tree. Clues from my tree supposedly helped over 160 other people this year. I also maintained a tree rating of 9.9. As an aside, I've now surpassed 3000 people in my tree (only 35 still need some kind of documentation). I intentionally build slowly. While I know 3000 is but a drop in the bucket compared to some trees - I'm still thrilled!
• Took time to reflect on the little wins, and wrote this post.

So there you have it. Though I barely made any progress at all when it comes to attaching hints and growing my tree, I was still able to feel a tiny bit productive. With my cold starting to ease, I'm hoping to get back to my regular routine in the next few days. The good part? The Ancestry algorithms are still churning away in the background and I'll have more new hints waiting to be evaluated!

Image by Annette Meyer from Pixabay