Yes, You Should Be Keeping A Common Place Book

What Do I Need?

• Something to write ON, like a notebook, index cards, or perhaps loose pages that you keep in a binder
• Something to write WITH, like a pen, pencil, or marker

What Do I Write Down?

Anything that interests you, or that you don’t want to forget. Here are a few examples

• Favorites lines from songs, poems, or books
• Books I want to read/how I found out about them
• Movies or TV shows that I want to watch/how I found out about them
• Recipes I want to try
• Notes, ideas, quotes from books, YouTube videos, or podcasts

Why Should I Keep One?

• ChatGPT says: “The purpose of a commonplace book is to help you process, understand, and retain information that’s valuable to you.”
• Author/speaker Ryan Holiday says: “I’ll want to have it around for later reference, for potentially using it in my writing or work, or for possible inspiration at some point in the future.”

OK. How Do I Keep My Book Organized? Here are some ideas

• Take the first few pages of your book and create a table of contents
• Put common ideas on a page, like some pages for quotes, or song lyrics, or recipe ideas
• Find a way to index similar subjects, or topics, perhaps with tabs, colored stickers on the margin, or category notes on each entry
• Migrate your best ideas into a computer system, like Evernote, Apple Notes, Obsidian, and so forth

Are There Different Types of Commonplace Books?

I consider there to be two broad categories of Commonplace books: General, and Specialized

General Books are a catch all for anything

Specialized books are usually organized by subject matter, or by topic. Here are a few examples

• New or favorite words
• Grammar or examples for learning Italian
• Songwriting ideas or exercises
• Sketchbook/art journal

Can’t I Just Use My Computer, or Tablet?

Sure. But there are two additional considerations. First, computers or tablets are usually less portable than a notebook and pen or pencil. Do you want to pull out your laptop when you think of something while waiting at your dentist appointment, or on a crowded bus?

Second, there are psychological studies that show that writing by hand is better for cementing memories and understanding than typing is. I’ve found one relatively recent example here. On the other hand, digital commonplace books might be easier to index and to find material that you are looking for.

My Journey

I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve kept common place books for most of my life.

An early memory is listening to Led Zeppelin II and writing down the lyrics to some of the songs. I only knew one guitar chord, so I wrote down which fret I would play this chord on for the various lines of the lyrics.

Another early memory is reading about Captain Cook’s exploits and making notes on his ship design. I then drew a sketch of this ship from my imagination. (which my mother kept, and I now have it framed in my house!)

In more recent history, I indexed favorite magic effects from Genii Magazine-referencing the issue/page number, an overall summary of the effect, and a few sentences on the method.

A Few Common Place Book Creators You May Be Familiar With

• Ben Franklin
• Ronald Reagan
• George Carlin
• Eminem
• Kurt Cobain
• Frances Ford Coppola
• Martin Luther King
• Jim Morrison

How Can I Learn More?

Youtube Videos: ParkNotes has an extensive library of videos, as do many other YouTubers

Reddit has sections on commonplace books

Jillian Hess has a detailed history of commonplace books, as well as a substack related to commonplace books

Sample Pages From My Most Recently Completed Common Place Book

This book was a hardbound A5 size dot journal with 240 pages that I found at Walmart.