Finish What You Started

Hi Reader!

This is the first issue of the new Finish What You Started newsletter from Chronicle Makers.

Each Sunday evening you'll receive one thing to move you towards finishing this week, one AI item worth your time, and what family historians are finishing inside Chronicle Makers.

Five minute read, and as AI likes to say, no fluff.

One step towards finishing

Name your one.

Write down the name of the one ancestor you would finish first if you could only finish one this year. Then write one sentence on why it's them.

Writing down a plan quiets the nagging. Unfinished tasks stick in your head (the Zeigarnik effect). E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found that just writing a concrete plan for an unfinished goal makes those intrusive thoughts stop, even before you’ve done any of the work.

Most of us (me!) have been researching everyone at once for years, and everyone at once never gets finished. One name is where finishing starts. Here's mine (now stuck on my monitor):

One AI item to know

Before you type anything, ask yourself: am I asking AI to find something, or to work on something I already have?

Asking AI to find something is the reason AI invents records (and sometimes ancestors!) for family historians, and three years of better tools haven't fixed it. How can you tell if you are asking AI to find something vs. work on something? More on it here:

​Read the Find/Work Test →​

Also this week: if you use Gemini for AI, it changed on Thursday. Google's free plan now runs only its smallest model, Flash-Lite. The stronger models moved to the paid plans. If you find it acting differently than it used to, that's probably why.

In the Chronicle Makers Community

Last week we began running Shelf Checks on our research projects. My report listed out all the conflicts between what I thought I found vs. the records I have. I shared my report during Maker Time in the Community and what my next steps are. It felt good to do a brain dump of all this research and get what I had organized. Fresh start!

New on the website

​What Is a Chronicle? The Forms of Family History Writing →​

A family history can take more shapes than a blog post or a book. Here's how to pick the one you'll actually finish.

Chronicle Makers is where family historians finish their research and write it up. The doors are open. Come in when you're ready, and bring that ancestor who has been nagging you. It's only one, right?

Happy Chronicling!

—Denyse

P.S. Hit reply and tell me the name you wrote down. I read every one.

P.P.S. My other newsletter is The AI Brief for Family Historians. That comes out on the 1st of each month. If you want to only get that one, just click here:

​Just send me the AI Brief once a month →​

Once a month: what changed in AI, sorted into what matters for family history and what you can skip.