Somehow, it’s time to review my 2024 genealogy goals and I’m not too pleased with myself this year.

First, the 2024 list:

1. No matter what, stick with the job of cleaning up my software program. I’ve actually completed through my 3X great grandparents, which is the sum total of my paternal Carpatho-Rusyn branch of the tree. However, the maternal side has a few lines back as early as the 1400s, thanks to professionals who published terrific articles. That will still take me quite a while to complete. I really want this off my plate by the end of the year.

2. I love Jacqi Stevens’ 12 for ’23 on A Family Tapestry, where she spends a month on a research problem and then moves on. I followed this idea in 2023, using it to seek out more life details and social history for multiple family lines. Jacqi sets her list up before she begins, but I found being more flexible and choosing new people/families each month worked better for me, so I will be working on 12 for ’24.

I even added the following comment about Goal #1: I’m just going to have to ignore BSOs that might pull me down the rabbit holes and stick with clean up.

Well, I failed miserably with Goal #1. There were just too many rabbit holes and extended family requests to help with research for me to ignore.

I did get through my 4X great grandparents with the cleanup, so that is definitely a positive. I love the format of a different family each month. However, while my paternal tree doesn’t extend beyond 3X great grandparents, my mother’s tree goes back 14+ generations on a few English lines where wills were written and still survive.

Goal #2 I accomplished with ease, although some of the aforementioned rabbit holes happened because of my 12 for ’24 posts.

2025 Goals

So, where do I go from here? Do I give up on cleaning up my software? It is a hideously boring task and I have many generations to cover. On the other hand, most of my lines don’t extend beyond 12 generations, so I basically have about 8 generations to cover. I wonder if I’d be more likely to stick with it if I aimed for one generation of cleanup per month AND it’s only the maternal tree that needs to be done. That might be a good compromise, but if I still don’t finish the job next year, I may relegate it to the garbage heap!

Therefore, Goal #1 is to attack my software cleanup month by month, beginning with Generation 5. If I stay on task, I’ll be done in August, which leaves the remaining few months to finish those ancient generations. Divvying up the generations by month also makes the job seem way less overwhelming. Completing the really early generations shouldn’t be too hard because most of my data on those ancestors come from one or two scholarly articles covering the family. No birth, marriage and death certificates for people born in the 1400s!

Goal #2 will definitely be to continue my “12 for” series with 12 for ’25. So many more records are becoming available online and, particularly with FamilySearch’s full-text search, making new discoveries is getting easier by the day.

Goal #3 – I’m going to bring back a goal I had left behind a couple of years ago. I need to again beef up the number of comments I leave on other’s genealogy blog posts. I did leave comments, but everyone loves feedback and I know I could do better.

Goal #4 – This goal is very specialized. A second cousin asked for help researching the side of his family that we don’t share. I did a fair amount of work on his lines before our cruise, but there is still more to be found. I’m going to devote some time in January to working on those lines.

That’s it for my review. How’d you do with your own goals?