Slow research
I am often asked what my turnaround is. The honest answer is that the document sets the pace, not the calendar.
When somebody first writes to me about a project, the question that comes most often, sometimes politely and sometimes not, is how long this will take. The honest answer is that I do not know yet. I do not even know how long it will take until I have spent some time with the material.
A single 19th century inventory page can take me an afternoon. A bound letterbook can take a year, on and off, alongside other work. A small folder of family papers can be slower than a large one, if the small folder is the kind that asks more questions than it answers.
I am not trying to be precious about this. It is just that estate documents are bad at being hurried. The mistakes that I have made when I tried to be quick are the mistakes I think about longest.