The Scattershot Genealogist: "Ooh, shiny!"

Yesterday, I was trying to get caught up with a bunch of tasks, getting caught up in my research, getting ready to go to Salt Lake City for RootsTech in a couple of weeks.  Here's what I've pulled from my history, to show what I was up to yesterday:



Visited:

Geneabloggers website (multiple times)

Geneabloggers facebook page (multiple times)

Genealogy Bloggers at RootsTech 2015 facebook page

Genealogy Do-Over facebook page (multiple times)

Ancestories

Genealogical Speakers Guild

FileMarker.com

DearMYRTLE's Genealogy blog

Book of Me

Bag the Web

Scrivener Mini-Bootcamp

Literature and Latte

RootsTech

WikiTree

Ancestry (multiple times)

MyHeritage

Geni

Amazon

Tripped by My Roots

Twitter

Heather Wilkinso Rojo's site

Eventbrite

RootsMagic

Panstories

Living in the Past (my blog)



Read an article on:

Ancestral Findings' site

Geneabloggers

Jeanealogy



Downloaded:

Essential family tree forms

Filemarker free edition

Windows Magnifier

Scrivener

ACOM German Civil Registration .pdf

RootsTech iPad app

RootsMagic 7



Googled several ancestors/potential cousins (and found a possible cousin is a registered sex offender -- gaakh!)

Googled API



Ordered a couple of genealogy-related books from Amazon



So . . . can we see what the problem is here?  I've written about being a "slapdash genealogist," in terms of not feeling very organized overall in my research.  But this is a little different -- on one day, I seem to go from subject to subject, as I read people's posts on facebook, and I want to follow up on ideas or suggestions from those posts, I go to a website and then that brings something else up, so I go there, I frantically download things that may be of use, I bookmark this and that -- and in the end, what have I accomplished? 



I remember feeling this way in grad school, writing my dissertation -- every article I read led to other articles, different ideas, different possible topics.  I finally had to just say "STOP!" and focus on what I had, or the work was never going to be done.



I guess focus is the issue, how to keep myself focused on one topic in a particular session.  Robert Frost talks about "how way leads on to way,"* and that's the problem here -- I start off on one path, but then something grabs my attention, and something else, and on it goes, until the original intention I held when I sat down to work is lost.






 This is how I look, after a couple of hours.



What tricks or techniques do you use to stay focused on a particular subject?  If you see something interesting, how do you essentially save that for later, so you don't get distracted from your original intention?  I'd love to have some advice.







*Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"

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