A Look at My Personal Commonplace Book System

I am going to be completely and totally honest. My personal commonplace book is a mess.

My commonplace book primarily consists of quotes from books, but I do occasionally research different note taking systems, song lyrics, recipes, etc. It didn't make sense for me to have a separate notebook for each thing. (I'd likely mix them at some point anyway...) So they all live together in my personal commonplace book system in a chaotic mess.

For my analog commonplace book system, there's very little organization compared to my work commonplace book. The primary goal with my analog commonplace book system is to simply capture the information.

My analog personal commonplace book system consists of the following:

• Daily capturing of information in one of my pocket notebooks (or in my daily log) that serve as an "inbox." Currently, my primary pocket "inbox" is a Mokeskine notebook (specifically, the soft cover grid layout), but I do have Field Notes notebooks and Passport TN notebooks randomly available for when I want to carry a notebook/wallet situation.

• My A5 Leuchtturm1917 commonplace book for long form entries and commonplacing at home.

Funnily enough, I do have a digital commonplace book using Obsidian.md. This is where I actually try to organize things.

My personal commonplace books.

My Pocket Notebook

My pocket notebook serves as an "inbox," and I try to use it on a daily basis. (If I'm not using a pocket notebook, things are likely mixing with my tasks and notes in my rapid daily logs.)

My entries fall into four categories:

• informational,

• quote,

• brain dump, or

• work note.

Mostly, my entries consist of quotes that resonate with me from books I'm reading or from social media. I also have short informational items, like vocabulary words or lists of books I want to look into.

I found that for my daily use notebooks I need simplicity. If it's too bulky to carry around, if I need a lot of supplies, or if the system is overly complex, I'm unlikely to use it daily. With the goal of quickly capturing information, I keep things very simple.

My pocket notebooks aren't meant to be archival. Although I have yet to throw any away, I don't write in them with the intention of keeping them forever. That means I can be less precious with them, and I don't really care what kind of pen I use with it. Mostly, I use gel or ballpoint pens, and the color coding for my categories is either done with Midori Join Dots or Zebra Mildliners.

My A5 commonplace book.

My A5 Notebook

My A5 notebook stays at home. I'm not in this notebook daily. Sometimes I don't touch it for weeks. I only use it when I have the time and inspiration to do so.

The purpose of my A5 notebook is to house more of my long form commonplace book entries, which primarily consitsts of novels I annotate. So it does serve as my reading journal as well.

The Coffee Monsterz Co tiny icon stickers.

When I start a new book entry, it starts on a fresh page, and I only add it to my A5 notebook after I've completed the book. I add the basic book information, the book description, my thoughts on the book, and finally quotes from the book. The quotes are mostly quotes that resonated with me, quotes that I found to be beautifully written, or quotes that I think explain key points about world-building. And I use icon stickers from The Coffee Monsterz Co and print out the book cover to make things look pretty.

Additional quote entries in my A5 commonplace book.

In the empty space after a book entry, I'll add in other random quotes from other things just to fill the space.

The only organization I have for my A5 notebook is my Table of Contents for my long form entries.

Sometimes, I have duplicate quotes in both my pocket notebook and my A5 notebook, but I don't bother worrying about that much. It just means I really enjoyed the quote that I felt worthy of writing it twice.

My A5 notebook is meant to be archived since it's also my reading journal. So I take a bit more care in how I write in it, and I'm probably using fountain pens instead of gel pens.

My entry in my digital commonplace book for Babel by R.F. Kuang.

My Digital Commonplace System

My digital commonplace system is something I'm still developing. I've deleted and recreated it multiple times already, but I think I'm finally getting a hang of how I want it all to look and be organized.

My digital commonplace system is where most of my organization happens. Since majority of my commonplace book consists of quotes, I personally feel that it's a bit difficult to organize in a notebook. I mean, how do you keep track of quotes about writing, family, courage, hope, etc. in a physical notebook, especially when you want to add topics after the fact. It's not like my work commonplace book where I typically search for things by the forensic discipline or specific keywords for the discipline. So I needed a system that's searchable and allows me to create as many tags as I want to.

The graph view in my digital commonplace book.

I use Obsidian.md for my digital commonplace book system. I decided on Obsidian (1) because I have complete control over how my data is stored (locally on my computer drive, on iCloud, or via Obsidian sync), (2) the graph view, and (3) the fact that all my notes are stored in folders. For whatever reason, organizing things in a folder makes more sense to my brain compared to a database table in Notion. But that's all personal preference.

I have folders for books read, brain dumps, information, quotes, reading notes, and vocabulary to name a few. All of my active notes don't get placed into a folder until I'm done with it. My digital commonplace book is still relatively small, and I do go through my quotes every so often to see if I want to change up how things are tagged or link them to other notes. I really look forward to seeing how it looks once it's built out a bit more in a few months.

My digital commonplace book is something I strive to go into on a weekly basis, but it's probably more like monthly. I transfer all of my handwritten entries from my pocket and A5 notebooks into here, and I'll usually put a check mark next to the entry in my analog notebook to indicate that I've transferred it.

My personal commonplace book with entries that have been transferred.

Once in a while, if there's notes I want to take while I'm reading a book (character information, key world building notes, etc.), I'll add it to Obsidian while I'm reading. This is probably the only time I open the Obsidian app on my phone.

I'm not going to go into any more detail about Obisidan or my digital commonplace book here in this blog post. I feel like most of you prefer analog journaling and notebooks so it's a bit unnecessary, and going into detail about how Obsidian works would be a post in of itself. However, if that's something you'd like to read about let me know in the comments or by DM-ing me on Instagram.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this series of blog posts on my commonplace book system! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. I have really enjoyed chatting with everyone about their commonplace book systems and the kinds of things they're reseraching and studying. It's been a lot of fun sharing this with you all!