by ignorantcollective

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:

- A Common Place

- How and why to keep a Commonplace Book