How to Keep a Commonplace Book: A Modern Guide (With Templates and Examples) | Chapterly Blog
How to Keep a Commonplace Book: A Modern Guide Quick Answer: A commonplace book is a personal, thematically organized collection of quotes, passages, and ideas that you transcribe from your reading. Unlike a reading journal (organized by book) or a bullet journal (organized by date), a commonplace book is organized by theme — so a passage from Marcus Aurelius on death, a line from Joan Didion on grief, and a paragraph from Atul Gawande on mortality all end up under the same heading, cross-pollinating. The form dates to 16th-century Europe; John Locke published a formal indexing system in 1706. Modern versions live on Notion, Obsidian, or a paper notebook. To start one: pick a medium, define 10-20 initial themes, set a weekly transcription habit, and build a simple index. The benefit compounds: by year five, your commonplace book is more useful than most books in your library, because it contains only what you cared enough to transcribe, organized by what you cared about. You finish a book you loved. You underlined thirty passages. You close it, put it on the shelf, and within six weeks you have forgotten every single one. This is the core problem a commonplace book solves....