Commonplace Book: The Secret to Unlocking Creative Insights and Decluttering Your Mind

Over the past year I started to keep a few small notebooks on me or near my bed and would write down anything that came to my mind. More recently, I learned that not only was there a name for these notebooks, but it was actually trendy to have them during the 1700–1800’s. The notebooks were called “Commonplace Books”. They have helped me improve my memory, retain information from books, and unlock creative insights. Anyone who wants to unlock and declutter their brain should start one immediately!

What is a Commonplace Book?

The Commonplace book was first introduced in the 1600’s and were used widely by scholars, scientists, and anyone with intellectual ambition to document their thoughts, observations and knowledge. The trend peaked in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s specifically in England and was believed to be a way to improve your memory, generate new ideas and insights, and essentially produce a mental footprint that could be reviewed at any point in time.

My interpretation: A Commonplace book is NOT a journal — It is a small notebook or set of index cards that you use to write down any ideas, quotes, thoughts, anecdotes, experiences, or observations. The goal of a Commonplace book is to compile a record, of what may seem like random findings and then use them as a reference and guide for your life and career.

Benefits of Keeping A Commonplace Book

• Declutter Your Brain: Your brain is not a storage facility. It is an idea generator and by writing down your thoughts, it improves your memory and allows you to think more clearly.

• Generate new ideas: Reviewing previous entries helps you uncover and identify different associations and formulate new ideas.

• Sleep better: Writing down any nagging thoughts that keep your mind running at night assures your conscious that the idea or thought will be there for you in the morning.

• Remember Peoples Names: Writing down the name of people you meet and any notes about your interaction is a great way to make a first impression and build rapport.

• Get More Out of Meetings: When speaking with someone or in a meeting, it is very difficult to take notes on your phone or computer and still give the impression that you are engaged in the conversation. A Commonplace book takes away the distractions of technology and keeps you present.

• NO Expectations: Last but NOT least, there are NO expectations for keeping a Commonplace book. It can be what ever you want it to be and doesn’t carry the same daily pressures as a journal does.

How I Use My Commonplace Book

I keep a small notebook by my bedside and also try to carry another one with me anytime I leave my home. My mind is usually racing before I go to sleep, bouncing from my next million dollar idea (not really) to remembering things that I forgot to do that day. Laying awake with my eyes closed, I try to assure myself that I am going to remember these thoughts and ideas in the morning. Writing them down has been revolutionary for me and allows my mind to have ease and wind down for the night.

My favorite part about a Commonplace Book is that I set NO expectations for it. It’s there if I need it, but unlike a journal I won’t feel guilty if I go multiple days without writing anything down.

Topics I Record:

• Random ideas or thoughts

• Funny jokes, tweets, and sayings

• Quotes from books I am reading

• Names of people that I meet

• Tasks I want to complete

• Notes from meetings

• Observations from environments

• Book / article recommendations

Along with getting a good nights rest, reviewing my previous entries has given me new insights into past conclusions, significantly improved my memory and increased my ability to utilize information from reading books.

Scholars That Used Commonplace Books

Charles Darwin (1800's): Darwin’s revolutionary findings on Natural Selection were extensively documented in his commonplace book over five months before he realized what was so important. Only after going back and reviewing his previous entries did he come to a conclusion.

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004): Used a notecard system to jot down jokes, poetry lines, historical facts, and quotes that caught his attention. The notecards are still intact and show multiple examples of Reagan referring to information for his public speeches.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826): Kept multiple commonplace books and recorded legal notes, and his favorite quotes from the books he was reading at the time in English, Latin, and Greek.

John Locke (1632–1704): The English Enlightenment philosopher, wrote an entire book title “A New Method of Making Common-Place Books”

“In which techniques for entering proverbs, quotations, ideas, speeches were formulated. Locke gave specific advice on how to arrange material by subject and category, using such key topics as love, politics, or religion.”

Bill Gates (2019): Keeps a form of a commonplace book, in the formate of a blog that includes, book reviews, quotes, and documents which books he’s read and is currently reading. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books

“Where Good Ideas Come From”— Steven Johnson: The Natural History of Innovation

I recently finished Steven Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From”, which gave a name to my random notebooks and intrigued me to learn more about Commonplace Books. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning how some of the worlds greatest minds came up with great ideas. Johnson identifies seven key patterns behind genuine innovation and takes you back in time to Darwin’s discovery of Natural Selection, and brings you forward to the creation of Google and Apple.

Here are a few quotes on “Commonplacing”:

“There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: maintaining the books enabled one to “lay up a fund of knowledge, from which we may at all times select what is useful in the several pursuits of life.”

“The tradition of the common place book contains a central tension between order and chaos, between the desire for methodical arrangement, and the desire for surprising new links of association. For some Enlightenment-era advocates, the systematic indexing of the commonplace book became an aspirational metaphor for one’s own mental life.”

“Each rereading of the commonplace book becomes a new kind of revelation. You see the evolutionary paths of your past hunches: the ones that turned out to be red herrings; the ones that turned out to be too obvious to write; even the ones that turned into entire books.”

Pen and Paper vs. Technology

Technology is a great resource for a lot of things, but I believe that pen and paper connects you with thoughts and information on a deeper level. If you are looking to get the most out of a Commonplace Book, I would recommend that you use a pen and paper.

Pen & Paper Pros:

• Keeps you present

• Eliminates Distractions

• More intimate

• Increases Memory

How to start — Where to buy one?

Buy A Notebook: I personalized a “pocket” sized soft cover notebook from Moleskin and purchased a nice pen to go with!

• Moleskin

• Field Notes

Start Writing: I started out by literally writing anything that came to mind that I found interesting. Over time you want to start to develop a framework and style that makes it easy to reference and review.

Closing

Remember — starting and maintaining a commonplace book should be an effortless task and should NOT have any expectations attached to it. I am writing this in hopes that it will help people unlock and declutter their mind, but I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that I am REALLY hoping that “Commonplacing” catches on and becomes trendy again!