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Some of the world's greatest thinkers, writers, and philosophers attribute the development of their ideas to keeping something called a commonplace book.
Learn why and how to start a commonplace book to improve memory, reflection, and personal wisdom with paper and pen.
Key Takeaways
- Keeping a commonplace book improves recall and deepens understanding of what you read.
- Reflection is essential to transform reading into personal wisdom.
- Handwriting notes enhances memory and engagement more than typing for the author.
- Starting with any notebook is better than waiting for the perfect one.
- Consistent use of a commonplace book builds a valuable personal library of ideas.
What the video covers
- Commonplace books have been used by great thinkers to develop and retain ideas.
- The author struggled with poor recall from reading until adopting a commonplace book.
- A commonplace book is simply a notebook used to collect quotes, anecdotes, and reflections from others.
- Any notebook works; the key is to start rather than focus on expensive or fancy options.
- John Locke emphasized applying what we read through reflection, not just passive reading.
- Commonplace books help synthesize wisdom from reading and life experience into personal knowledge.
- The author prefers handwriting over digital note-taking for better memory and engagement.
- Writing by hand is slower and more effortful but fosters deeper connection and discernment.
- A systematic approach to using a commonplace book involves regular reading, reflection, and selective note-taking.
- Over time, the commonplace book compounds knowledge and shapes original thought.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Commonplace Books
- 00:46What is a Commonplace Book?
- 01:38Choosing Your Notebook
- 02:35Importance of Applying What You Read
- 03:38Empiricism and Reflection in Learning
- 04:49Building Wisdom Through Reflection
- 05:46Why Handwriting Matters
- 07:45Challenges and Benefits of Handwriting
- 08:33Making Time to Read and Take Notes
- 10:27Practical Tips and Final Encouragement
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
So, for years, I would read books that I really enjoyed, and then afterwards, I would realize that I just didn't really remember all that much from what I'd read. This is obviously an embarrassing waste of time. When I
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learned about the value of keeping a commonplace book, suddenly I noticed that I started to develop better recall.
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I could remember important parts of the book that I was reading. So now if I read a particularly good book or if I watch a good film and I come across a quote or an anecdote that I want to
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remember, I jot it down in a commonplace book. So what is a commonplace book exactly? A commonplace book is really just a fancy way of saying a notebook whose sole purpose it is to collect other people's thoughts. In this video,
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I want to talk a little bit about why it might make sense to keep a commonplace book, why I think that paper and pen is superior to using a digital note-taking system, and then I'm going to talk about
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a systematic way to use your commonplace book so that you can increase your knowledge and your learning over time.
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Before we start, let me get something important out of the way. I've seen videos here on YouTube where they'll recommend very specific or fancy or expensive notebooks. And the truth is that there is no right notebook for a
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commonplace book. You can literally use whatever you like to write in, or whatever you can afford. That's the right notebook. So, you can use Field Notes or Moleskine. Those work fine. You can even use just spiral-bound
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notebooks that you get at like CVS or Walmart. Those are fine, too. This specific notebook that I'm going to show you here looks pretty, but I received it as a gift. I'm not sure that I would
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have bought it myself. But the binding is threaded. I'm not sure if you can see that or not, which will probably hold up better than other notebooks I've used in the past. And it also has, I don't know if you can see, dots and lines, which I find really useful because I'm such a sloppy writer that it helps kind of keep everything neat and organized. So it's more important that you get started on one sooner rather than later. And here's
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why. The English philosopher John Locke once said, "It would be of little purpose to spend our time in reading books if we could not apply what we read to our use." It is an old saying that that is the truest
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poverty when, if you have an occasion for anything, you can't use it because you know not where it is laid. A lot of writers like to keep a commonplace book in order to have a collection of quotes that they can mine. And I think that
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seems fairly obvious, but a commonplace book is important if living a good life is important to you. And I think that's a little bit more universal than simply using it for the purpose of being a writer and going back and using
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quotes. So why do I say that? There's basically two ways to approach life, which you can think of as a giant puzzle or a maze. One is to learn things from direct experience, right? The hard way, as we're told when we're kids. The
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second way is through the wisdom of others who came before you. Wisdom, in the way that I'm using the term, is the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment. So directly experiencing something is arguably the stickiest way to commit to memory what
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you want to learn. But you know, think of a kid touching a hot stove and then burning their finger. They'll probably never do that again. In epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, this form of knowing is considered empiricism, right? And John Locke, who I mentioned
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before, was an empiricist. But wait a second. If direct experience is superior and a more true form of knowledge according to the empiricists like Locke, why does he recommend learning from the wisdom of others? So Locke was adamant
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that all knowledge comes from experience. But in addition to direct sensory experience, he added reflection, which arises when we process our experiences, when we reflect, including what we encounter in books and in conversation. He said, I quote, "Those who have read about everything
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are thought also to understand everything, but it is not always so. Reading provides the mind only with materials of knowledge. Thinking makes what we read ours. It is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of literary collections. Unless we chew
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them over again like a cow chewing its cud, they won't give us strength and nourishment."
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So, a commonplace book is really just an opportunity to escape the wide and shallow reading that so many of us fall prey to, that I fell prey to. I spent many years trying to read as many books as possible and then not having
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much to fall back on. The commonplace book provides us a moment to reflect on what we've read, to pull out the best parts or the confusing parts or the parts that maybe we disagreed with. It doesn't really matter if you enjoy
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reading novels or philosophy or poems or non-fiction or self-help. Anything you read is an opportunity to add to your corpus of wisdom. And over time, you start to build your own library for how to live a good life. And what you'll
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notice is that in the beginning, it won't feel like much has happened at all. And that's okay. But if you keep adding to it over time, like all things in life, it will compound. It builds on itself where at a certain point you
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start to find commonalities between different writers and thinkers and then your own thoughts start to take shape, and what was once other people's thoughts now get synthesized into your own thoughts. That's really the power of a commonplace book. So I only use paper
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and pen for this. I don't have a study to show you that definitely proves that handwriting is superior to typing. I'm sure there are plenty of studies that say handwriting is better. There's probably equal studies that demonstrate
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why those studies were wrong. So I'm not making a claim about taking notes during a lecture or a class or a meeting where the time you spend writing notes is not time spent paying attention to the speaker. I'm only referring to
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writing that is on your own time inside of a commonplace book. And for me, writing by hand is superior. Usually I'll just use a basic pen. This pen is the Papermate Flare medium.
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I think it writes nicely. There's not too much bleeding onto the other page. If you can see that, you can't really see the bleeding, and it just has a nice feel. So just use whatever it is that you enjoy
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writing with because writing by hand is more difficult and you will have to spend time doing it, and your hand may hurt if you haven't written by hand in a while. So find a pen that you like
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that just writes easily and that you can get into a habit of using instead of dreading it. Writing by hand is harder.
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I do want to be upfront about that. For people that spend most of their time typing, writing by hand takes longer, and after a while, my own hand starts to hurt. But there is something mechanical, almost like a mind-body connection that
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happens when I write with a pen. And it just sort of puts something into my memory in a way that typing simply doesn't for me. I feel more connected to what I'm writing when I write with a pen. And because it can be
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a little bit of a pain to do it, I'm also more discerning about what makes it into the commonplace book. And that's a feature, not a bug. So, how to use a commonplace book correctly. I'm going to go through a three-step process that I
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use to make sure that my commonplace book grows in value over time. And first of all, it starts with making time to read, which if you don't make time to read, this is not going to be of much
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use for you. I'll be addressing that in a future video because I have a lot of thoughts to say and I don't want this.
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use for you. Um, I'll be addressing that in a future video. Uh, because I have a lot of thoughts to say and I don't want this video to get too long. Um, but just understand that a commonplace book is a
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collection of other people's thoughts and to be exposed to other people's thoughts, you have to be exposed to what they wrote. Um, so to make this easier, uh, for my ADHD, I do the following. Um, I rotate books. So I always will have a
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few books that I'm reading at the same time and they're often different genres. So um I always have something to match my mood. Sometimes difficult texts I'll leave for the morning hours when my brain is sharper. Um in the evening I
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like to read a novel or maybe a narrative non-fiction. Um this way my mood or energy never becomes an excuse not to read. I also give myself permission to quit books. So the French philosopher Michelle de Monteno once
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said, "If I encounter difficulties in reading, I do not gnaw my nails over them. I leave them there." Right? Our time is finite. And for all practical purposes, you could say that the number of books you could read is approaching
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infinite. It's so vast that even if you listed out only the books you plausibly would want to read in your lifetime, I'm guessing it would be a huge undertaking to finish them within your lifetime. So, don't get too caught up on like I have
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to finish this book. You don't have to unless uh it's part of a homework assignment. So, the thing I want you to recognize is that if something isn't clicking, if it's not it's not you, it's just the book. So, give yourself
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permission to put it down and just move on. I'm also mindful of the power of the screen. So, like many of you, my phone is a constant distraction. I get messages and notifications and badges and all of that just pulls me away from
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sitting down and reading a book. And even though they might be small kind of like in the moment, they do add up to hours that I could have dedicated to reading. I'm not saying I'm perfect. No one is. And sometimes there is value in
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turning your brain off and just watching YouTube or Tik Tok. Um, but is that really what I want to be doing with my spare time all of the time? And the answer for me is no. I want to spend
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more time with books. So, I've started doing the following with my phone. I put my phone in grayscale. I keep it in a different room. It's not even in the same room as me. And I put it on
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airplane mode when I'm working or when I want to focus. I remove all notifications except for the few people in my life that I care about. And I've even started experimenting with turning my phone into a dumb phone. So, I
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noticed that once my phone is no longer a major distraction in my life, all of a sudden, I'm free to do other things. And hopefully, if you try this, you'll see that uh the same will start happening to
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you and you'll have all this newfound time and attention to dedicate towards reading. Okay. So, once you've made time for more reading and you're actually reading more books, how do you go about saving the best things you've read into
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your commonplace book? And okay, so once you've made more time for reading and you actually are reading more books, how do you go about saving the best things that you've read into your commonplace book? I quote the Roman stoic
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philosopher Senica. After you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day. From the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.
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In a future video, I'm going to go over Mortimer J. Adler's book, How to Read a Book.
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In this book, he goes into detail about how to read, summarize, and outline books that you've read. Um, but for this video, I'm going to keep the sites a little bit lower. I'm going to commit to writing just one, maybe up to six really
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good quotes or anecdotes um in from a book that you read, right? And you want to try to do this right away to get into your commonplace book.
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And I want to just quickly show you a few books that I've read over time and how I've gone about sort of remembering what it is that I want to write. So before I had any type of system at all
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and I didn't really know what I was doing, I would just put these note cards in the pages that I wanted to remember.
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This was really inefficient as you can tell. Um, I would dog ear and underline, but I had all these kind of note cards in there. Um, over time I've started to just trust my own dog ears.
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And you'll see that in there I'll underline passages or quotes. I write in the margin. I'm not afraid to write in my not in my books that I own, my physical books. Um or as in the case with this Montania book, I will just put
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these sticky postmark uh highlights in order to go back. And again, you see I'm underlining passages that I want to remember.
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Okay. So, in this specific example here, I followed the how to book um summarization and outline, but you don't have to do that for a commonplace book.
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You can also just leave uh specific quotes that you want to remember. And sometime I do sometimes I do this in just like really big blocky letters if they're really good quotes. Sometimes I just quickly um write them down. You can
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even do this with note cards, but the point of this video is for commonplace books and I think there is a place to have this as part of your rotation. And I'll leave you with the final quote um
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that I wrote here which I think is applicable uh for our video. So this is a quote from Barak Despinosa, the Dutch philosopher, and he says, "If the way I have shown to lead to these things now seems very hard, still it can be found.
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For if salvation were at hand and could be found without great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." So I think we all know that technology is taking up too much
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space in our lives. And if you made it to this part of the video, uh I'm going to assume that reading and learning more from books is important to you. And hopefully you've gotten enough out of this video to begin today. So, in fact,
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resist the temptation to click into the next video. I know I'm supposed to tell you to like and subscribe, but I actually I'd rather that you click X and just close out of YouTube completely.
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Find the first notebook that you can grab that you want to turn into your commonplace book and choose a book you want to read and just start reading.
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Right? Dedicate 15 to 20 minutes to reading a few pages. Start the momentum right now and I guarantee that your future self will thank you.
Topics:commonplace booknote-takinghandwritingreflectionJohn Lockelearningmemoryphilosophyreadingpersonal development
