Serene Soulful Living

Thank you to whatever day it was when I was watching satisfying journaling videos on YouTube and then I stumbled upon a journaling concept called a Commonplace Book.

No more coming up with a spontaneous ideas and lying to myself—“Oh, cool! I’ll remember that for when I actually need to.”

A commonplace book is a dedicated space for jotting down ideas, self-reflections, quotes, or inspiration you may stumble upon, sometimes during the most inopportune times, so you can capture the thought and reference it later.  For many, it’s a physical cute little notebook (which is what initially hooked me in because I have an odd obsession for cute small stationary things. Stationary loving girlies lets chat please). But for me, what ended up working out the best was simply keeping a note in the Notes app on my iPhone. (Pro Tip: I recently took it up a notch by creating a shortcut for it and placing it in the bottom banner of my home screen.)

Many of you might be doing this already without even realizing that your sharing a habit with famous stoics like Marcus Aurelius or Renaissance baddies like Sir Issac Newton. Free self-esteem boost for ya. This practice completely changed my day-to-day life because, for some reason, my best ideas always seem to show up during the most “not a good time” moments. And instead of hoping and praying that I’ll remember them later, now I have a dedicated place to store them. Just jotting down the idea is already a huge step towards intentional usage.

Writing things down is just part one of it. The “commonplacing” aspect comes from grouping those nuggets of inspiration into sections by topic such as quotes, recipes, makeup products, books to read, podcasts to check out. Literally anything. Now, to be completely honest with you all, my approach to commonplacing is essentially using it like a brain dumping station. I think that keeping an endless and beautifully disordered note page of my thoughts and ideas is pretty whimsical to look back on and see where my brain wondered off to. It takes the pressure off of making the thought aesthetic and grouping it correctly into my different sections. Really, my main win is that I got the chance to write the damn thought down. But, I eventually do get around to organizing it. I have a separate system where I comb through the thoughts, see if it still resonates, and group them into another digital notebook I keep on my OneNote that I like to call “my 2nd brain”. That notebook has all of the different areas in my life and projects within those areas. I group my thoughts into those project pages so that once I’m ready to look more into it, I already have a start and my initial ideas on the matter. I’m happy to share more on that at a later time. Nonetheless, there is not right or wrong way of doing commonplacing. If the method to ones madness is unique and works for us, then there’s no reason for changing it just to fit a trend. Our brain was meant to create ideas. Not store them.

I’m not going to lie though: one of my guilty pleasures is watching other people’s commonplace books. There’s something so satisfying about the pretty handwriting, color-coded sections, and neatly grouped pages. It really scratches the productivity loving part of my brain just right.

It’s a judgement free zone when it comes to commonplacing. The digital aspect of my common place book is another personal preference thing. I know that there is magic behind putting pen to paper. Trust me, I KNOW! I do my weekly and daily planning with pen to paper and my diary is also pen to paper. But I like carrying minimally and my phone is one thing that I’m going to have close by 9 times of out 10. That’s why my notes app is working just fine for me at the moment. But… I’m totally down to get influenced. Feel free to try to convince me.