In episode 7 of the Painted Porch Stoicism podcast, Greg Milner discussed 'commonplace books'.
Before the advent of computers and tools such as Evernote and OneNote etc, the commonplace book was your personal repository of wisdom and useful information. Part scrapbook, part self-constructed almanac, part capture portal for wise and interesting quotes, helpful medical recipes, poems, letters, and much else, the commonplace book became the reference work for your own life.
Apparently, however, a commonplace book wasn't your journal or diary.
The Wikipedia entry, for example, distinguishes keeping a commonplace book from maintaining a journal or diary:
- Commonplace books are not diaries nortravelogues, with which they can be contrasted: English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke wrote the 1706 bookA 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. Commonplace books, it must be stressed, are not journals, which are chronological and introspective."
Since listening to the podcast conversation about commonplace books I've been reading more about them, and I've begun keeping my own. As a progressing Stoic, the activity of collecting useful quotes from classic Stoic sources and modern authors is already ingrained - now, instead of just dropping them into my bottomless Evernote repository, I will also write them out by hand in my commonplace book.
If anyone else becomes interested in keeping a commonplace book, I'd love to hear what you will use it to capture.
Some commonplace book links:
Not super long ago I tried to launch the idea of making a #commonplace to create a sort of community commonplace book on Hubski. The feedback I got back largely said that it wasn't a great medium, and as time has gone on, I've become convinced of that too. Personally, I don't see the need for a single physical notebook for a commonplace anymore. I have a notebook I call Log in Evermore largely for quotes, and an older Notepad doc which utilizes the .LOG feature to create a quick journal and commonplace. The use of browser bookmarks, and an app called Pocket provide space for larger sets of information to be stored. I'm sure there is something to be said for writing it down, but I don't see that quality as justifying my time, space or effort in this regard.
Very much understand your perspective on digital alternatives, but in the same way I keep a written journal, I can see why I would feel more 'involved' with a written commonplace book. Perhaps it's because my major use will be to capture things I wish to learn and reaffirm, or perhaps it's that I'm more likely to browse through previous entries as I'm capturing new ones. Up to now, I've used Evernote for this, but I'm definitely guilty of dumping content into Evernote that I have never read again, or very rarely review. I think if the 'barrier to entry' is higher (the effort of writing vs simply hitting a button), then I will be more selective in the content I capture, and more likely to review. Also, I just have a thing about notebooks. :)