French essayist Joseph Joubert once claimed that “Writing is closer to thinking than speaking.” Indeed, writing down your thoughts, experiences, and musings is one of the most helpful habits to develop, especially for writers.
If you already do some journaling, you’re on the right track! But there’s another helpful practice that writers and thinkers have resorted to over the years: keeping a commonplace book.
What Is a Commonplace Book?
A commonplace book is a notebook where you can catalog information or inspirational truths. You can write down passages from the books that you read or even songs or poems that you like, so you can refer back to them in the future.
A good way to think of it is like a scrapbook in written form, where you collect “scraps” of some of the best ideas you encounter every day. You might also call it a book of quotes, and aptly so.
The earliest record of a commonplace book dates as far back as Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor whose Meditations was mainly a collection of thoughts, quotations, and notes. Eventually, it became an important foundation of Stoic philosophy.
By the Middle Ages, Erasmus’s De Copia became an instruction manual of sorts, causing the commonplace book to grow in popularity.
During the Renaissance, Francis Bacon made more than 1,600 commonplace book entries. By the time the Enlightenment rolled around, John Locke wrote a book called A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books.
Since then, keeping a commonplace has become, well, commonplace among all kinds of intellectuals. For example, Thomas Jefferson kept at least two: one for legal matters, and the other for literary passages. And did you know that most of our understanding of the Civil War came from diaries and notebooks that some of the soldiers kept during that time?
Many authors were also known to keep commonplace books, including the likes of Mark Twain, Virgina Woolf, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Modern-day successes like Bill Gates also use the technique.
What Do You Write in a Commonplace Book?
Here are some of the things that you can jot down in a commonplace book:
- quotes or information from books
- insightful ideas from conversations
- lines from movies
- song lyrics
- poems
- social media posts
- thoughts from podcasts
The reason it’s called a commonplace book is because it’s the common place where you collect all of these ideas. This makes it easy to find the passages that meant a lot to you, also helping you to make use of them in the future.
Historically, the commonplace book was a notebook. The notebook can be as simple as any composition book, or as classy as a Moleskine, or as intricately organized as a bullet notebook.
Others use index cards organized in some way, such as by theme or author. In our modern times, it can even be a digital commonplace book, and there are various apps to help in that purpose.
Why Are Commonplace Books Important?
Here are some of the top benefits of keeping a commonplace book:
1. You get to keep the ideas that inspire you.
In the Information Age, we’re bombarded by ideas every minute of every hour. It’s easy to feel inspired by something, and then move on and forget all about it.
Writing down inspiring thoughts, quotes, or ideas in a commonplace book lets you keep a record that you can return to in the future. Then, you can be reminded of the feeling you had when you first encountered them.
2. It saves time for research.
When you start writing a book, a speech, or even blog posts, if you already have lots of passages stored in your commonplace book related to your topic, you can easily refer back to them and save yourself hours of research.
3. It helps you form connections.
Education reformer Charlotte Mason says that “education is the science of relations.” As human beings, we naturally make connections between things, no matter how different they seem at first glance.
When you keep a commonplace book, you might choose to organize the contents according to theme. This means that you might copy a quote from an ancient Greek philosopher and compile it right next to the lyrics of a pop song! These connections can lead to even more inspiration.
4. It focuses your reading.
The more entries you put into your commonplace book, the more you become aware of passages that contain rich ideas.
This may help you become more discriminating in terms of the books you read or any other media that you consume. Hopefully, it will help you choose your future pursuits with wisdom.
What Is the Difference Between a Commonplace Book and a Journal?
While both the commonplace book and journal are a kind of record, the commonplace book is usually used for recording information or thoughts and ideas that other people have written about. The journal, on the other hand, serves as a place where you record your thoughts, reflections, opinions, and personal observations.
One way of looking at it is that while you would want to keep your journal under lock and key way from prying eyes, you probably won’t mind as much when someone sees the contents of your commonplace book. After all, it’s just a compilation of other people’s writings, and although they likely represent things that are important to you, it won’t contain your deepest, most private thoughts and feelings like a journal does.
Keeping a Commonplace Book
Maintaining a commonplace book is a healthy practice to help you keep a record of the things that inspire you at any one time. And knowing that many intelligent people and leaders also use this technique assures you that it’s a productive habit to have!
If you have never used a commonplace book before, we recommend keeping it simple. Just start with a notebook where you can copy down anything that strikes your fancy, and you’re good to go! The simpler it is when you start, the easier it is to stay consistent until it becomes an ingrained habit.
Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:
- Why You Should Keep a Dream Journal: 5 Tips for Discovering Helpful Insights
- How to Journal: 8 Tips for Getting the Most from Your Writing Time
- Why You Should Keep a Reading Journal: Tips for More Reflective Reading
- 8 Best Journals for Tracking Your Thoughts, Memories, and Progress
Yen Cabag is the Blog Writer of TCK Publishing. She is also a homeschooling mom, family coach, and speaker for the Charlotte Mason method, an educational philosophy that places great emphasis on classic literature and the masterpieces in art and music. She has also written several books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her passion is to see the next generation of children become lovers of reading and learning in the midst of short attention spans.
