Commonplace book

A commonplace book is a scrapbook of wisdom.

I’ve been hunting around for this concept for a while. Journals are about past events and reflection. I have Day One and a pad of paper for that. Notes are for collections of mundane knowledge: What plants are called in the garden, a list of CO2 monitors I might choose, the shortcut for resetting the SMC on a MacBook. I have Bear and OneNote for that.

But what should I use to remind myself of nuggets of wisdom I find in books, or discover through experience? A commonplace book. First I found out about household manuals, and thought I had pinpointed my idea, but it didn’t take long to realise they were all about running a house staff team, which is a long way from what I need. Yesterday I came across Ryan Holiday’s article about keeping a commonplace book and realised: This is it.