How To Have A Commonplace Book

[TimStr]

So lately, as I am studying more and more self-help material, especially books, I stumbeled about the commonplace book as a powerful way to collect and organize knowledge, ideas and insights. Many powerful and highly effective people used commonplace books for collecting their thoughts, like Francis Bacon, Ronald Reagan and John Milton.

Unlike a journal, which is more of a chronological and introspective record of thoughts, commonplacing is about structuring and organizing ideas and insights. It can become an immense collection of the wisdom and knowledge, if kept over the course of a lifetime.
I read about several methods on how to actually have one, but I'm not quite sure, how I want to go about it. So my questions to you are following:

Do you have a commonplace book?
How do you keep it (digitally, handwritten...)?
How do you organize it?
How do you transfer knowledge (eg. from reading a book) into it?

Thanks for all your suggestions and help.

[Ayla]

What about the journal section of this forum ?  

[Leo Gura]

I want to create a small course in the future what shows you how I organize and manage my commonplace book, with video screen captures and lots of explanations. It's taken me a good 3 years to come up with a good system. And it's really powerful.

[Phrae]

@Leo Gura wow that sounds very interesting. I find myself mostly concerned about retention and review methods. Got any tips on that?

[TimStr]

On 9.2.2016 at 11:20 PM, Ayla said:

What about the journal section of this forum ?  

That would be a great idea, too, and I think, that the self-help community would greatly benefit of us, if we all shared the wisdom, that we collected. Yet, I shy away from using the journal section as a commonplace book, because I think, it's better suited for daily or weekly journal-type post, to tracking my results and holding me accountable.
 

On 10.2.2016 at 6:36 AM, Leo Gura said:

I want to create a small course in the future what shows you how I organize and manage my commonplace book, with video screen captures and lots of explanations. It's taken me a good 3 years to come up with a good system. And it's really powerful.

Awesome, that sound really promising. I'm really looking forward to that.

[Jackie]

I have started writing in numerous books, and have tried to dedicate different books to different topics or themes.  I'd like a better way to organize those ideas, thoughts, etc and be able to reference what is there.  I'd like to hear what system Leo has come up with.

 

[Hunter Arrington]

On 2/10/2016 at 0:36 AM, Leo Gura said:

I want to create a small course in the future what shows you how I organize and manage my commonplace book, with video screen captures and lots of explanations. It's taken me a good 3 years to come up with a good system. And it's really powerful.

@Leo Gura That'd be great. I'm looking at ways of doing this right now. 

Edited December 19, 2016 by Hunter Arrington
spelling

[Donald]

 

@TimStr I categorize books in terms of insights I had , then I ask myself how can this book help me ? How can this book change/challenge what I know ? I've got notebooks where I write a brief yet detailed  summary of the book . Then I use Evernote to re-write again digitally. And I sync it with my Pc  so I can add on the spot . I created a book summary folder , quotes folder , and key insight folder each and every one of this folders belongs to a category: Psychology,Philosophy, Relationship,Sociology and so on . 

Firstly you may organize everything in a perfect way but what matters is how you internalize and apply the knowledge you get from the books in changing your life . 

Secondly, ask yourself why am I reading ? What are you looking? Is it to be "cool" and show your friends ," ohh look at me I read books" or is it because you are deeply interested in learning and building strong foundations? 

[Sir Raz]

I have thought about that in the past but I find it quite hard to do this. I just have random notepad texts in a folder on my laptop.

If Leo has some ideas to bring through a video , that would surely help!