Commonplace Book
I’ve been using commonplace Books1 in various ways without realizing it or its terminology. It is a central resource or depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations and information you come across during your life and didactic pursuits. The purpose of the book is to record and organize them for later use. It can be either digital or just plain old pen-paper.
One can maintain a commonplace book in physical paper notebooks, a digital form, or a combination of both. In the past, people have used commonplace books to;
- Record meaningful passages from books, speeches, or conversations.
- Write personal reflections and insights.
- Create connections between different fields of knowledge.
- Build a reference for creative, intellectual, or professional projects.
Marketer and Podcaster, Ryan Holiday wrote on How And Why To Keep A Commonplace Book.
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Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes. ↩