what is a commonplace
The tradition of keeping a commonplace book goes back centuries. Renaissance students used them as learning tools, and so did merchants, housewives, and grocers. People copied passages from their reading, but they also recorded practical knowledge alongside philosophical musings. What you'd typically find in a historical commonplace book:
Quotes and passages from reading
Proverbs, aphorisms, and wise sayings
Poems and song lyrics that struck them
Anecdotes and stories heard in conversation
Historical facts worth remembering
Lists of books to read and ideas to explore
Spiritual or religious reflections
Recipes (both culinary and medicinal)
Personal reflections sparked by any of the above
My commonplace book is where I collect the pieces of the world that catch my attention - quotes that make me think, observations that clarify something, fragments of ideas I want to remember, and obsessive deep-dives into rabbit holes where I can get lost for weeks, months, or years exploring the meaning of a single abstract concept, even a single word. In effect, I am building a conversation with myself across time.
The range of people who historically kept commonplace books shows just how flexible the practice was:
- Michel de Montaigne - His essays grew directly from his commonplace practice
- Francis Bacon - Kept "The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies" to assist his essay-writing
- John Locke - Designed elaborate indexing systems and wrote a whole treatise on the method
- Virginia Woolf - Kept hers "chaotic and alive"
- Thomas Jefferson - Used his for political and philosophical thinking
- John Milton - Collected excerpts from 80+ authors in multiple languages
- Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau - Both learned the practice as students at Harvard
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mark Twain - Kept messy reading notes mixed with other material
- Thomas Hardy - Followed a more formal method
What united them all - whether philosopher or poet, scientist or essayist - was the recognition that thinking isn't just something that happens in your head. It's something you can watch unfold across pages, connecting a line from Marcus Aurelius to something you noticed at breakfast to a question that's been bothering you for years. The "common" in commonplace means ordinary, everyday, the place where regular thinking lives, collected to see what it reveals. One needn't be a philosopher to benefit from this practice.
A commonplace is not about frantically collecting all the information that we are bombarded with; it's about creating a thoughtfully curated selection of whatever is interesting to me personally. It's not something to rush through. There is no sense of: this might be useful, so I'll save it just in case and read it later. A commonplace book is for "alreadys". I already love this line from this poem; I already found this article fascinating; I already cooked this recipe and it's a keeper.
Naturally, with a commonplace, the mind makes unexpected associations across time, and there are apps these days that help do that. I have nothing against tech. But whereas this practice might seem similar to the modern "second brain" idea, there's a crucial difference: Commonplace books have nothing to do with "productivity" or "content creation" in the modern sense. Those are outward-facing whereas a commonplace book is inward-facing.
Content creation in the modern sense is audience-focused and often monetisation-driven. If the "second brain" is about productivity and output optimisation, the commonplace is a dialogue with the first brain - the original one.
Content creation these days is like cooking to entertain, hosting a dinner party, and needing to impress the guests. The content creation from a commonplace is when you raid the fridge in the middle of the night because you feel like it and because you damn well can.
The personal essay as a literary form came directly from commonplace book practice. Montaigne's Essais famously began as his commonplace book. That's why his essays have that associative, "one thing reminds me of another" quality. Francis Bacon's essays developed the same way, from his collection of passages and phrases. The method was essentially: collect fragments, arrange them under themes, notice what patterns emerge, then develop those into sustained pieces of writing. This wasn't a minority practice, it was the primary use for many commonplace keepers.
The commonplace is a very different creature from a modern journal. There are no boring and generic journaling prompts. None of this: "What are you grateful for today?" or, "Describe a challenge you overcame". Unlike journals, a commonplace book generates questions that arise organically from the exploration of one's own mind. I might notice that a line from a song connects to a dream I had which connects to a conversation from last week, and suddenly I have something worth exploring. The material that arises tells me what really matters to me. A journal is romantic, maybe even helpful; but the commonplace is a beast. Feed it well.