A Genealogy and Family History Bullet Journal

When I started researching my genealogy and family history in earnest a couple of years ago, I became interested in documenting my work in the form of a Bullet Journal, with the goal of creating something akin to an old medieval manuscript with a modern twist. The Bullet Journal, developed by Ryder Carroll, is a methodology that its creator describes as a “…mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system. It’s designed to help you organize your what while you remain mindful of your why”. I began documenting my notes in an acid-free hard-cover journal capable of taking water-colors and heavy ink. While keeping to the journal format, I also incorporated several bullet-journal features, particularly in the organization of the journal into collections, categories, rapid logging, bullets, tasks, events, and notes, along with signifiers. I grouped these concepts together for a genealogy bullet journal and included some creative elements (water-color paintings, drop-caps, tables, charts, and trackers) in the compilation of my genealogical research.

Keeping a Bullet Journal tracker encouraged me to meet my daily, weekly and monthly goals and permitted me to forecast tasks for the upcoming month and year. The macro and micro approach used in traditional project management also comes in handy in the bullet journal format, and if you’re creative, you can really have fun with the presentation of the information you gather in your research. The bullet journal format promotes a stream-of-consciousness approach towards research, note taking, and project management which I found useful. I basically created a collection with keys and signifiers and mapped all of my research content to them. In the process, I incorporated hand-drawn maps with the use of stencils into my narratives, and project trackers to record my daily activities in family research, family page updates on my Facebook private group, and genealogy tree updates on Ancestry.com.

While I enjoyed writing in my Genealogy Bullet Journal for the joy it brought me in integrating creative with practical content, it became apparent that if I misplaced it, all would be lost and of course, I could not use the interactive data sets in the written form which I wanted to include in my research. I kept the Genealogy Bullet Journal active for about a year, until I found a new medium in my Microsoft Surface Pro, that could mix the creative and practical content in a digital format, thus providing me with the ability to maintain the project for perpetuity. With my Surface Pro I can use my stylus to draw and paint directly into a graphics program, and incorporate these drawings into my writing and research if needed. In addition, the Windows Surface Pro affords me the flexibility to incorporate more traditional digital software formats (graphs, word-processing, photos) into my research narrative and create data visualizations of my data in the form of interactive graphs.

I suppose the Roots & Leaves project on this WordPress platform serves as the latest incarnation of my Genealogy Bullet-Journal. So in the spirit of the Bullet Journal, I’ll incorporate the methodology and creative elements from my journal days into my present project as I delve deeper into my family history and make use of the trackers, and note-taking methodology championed by the medium, while adding some flair with an occasional water-color painting or drawing, and will transfer some relevant content from my journal to this online format.

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