A commonplace book is a notebook where one writes down ideas, quotes, information, concepts, and more, based on the interests of its owner. In 2011, I began keeping a commonplace book to capture and organize my thoughts about life and how best to live it. Fourteen years later, I have filled every page of that book, front and back. My commonplace book now stands, for me, as a source of widespread and useful wisdom, recording my changing thoughts about the whole of life, including what to do, how to do it, and why.
The entries in my commonplace book cover a lot of ground. In November 2011, I noted the six principle categories for setting business objectives: financial, marketing/sales, products, operations, human resources, and community. Three years on, I was impressed by the notion of German industrial designer Dieter Rams to think about design weniger, aber besser (less, but better). In 2019, I recorded a pyramid with the words ‘productivity, priorities, and purpose,’ in descending tiers. Earlier this year, on one of the last open pages, I captured a short inscription that I heard told from a sign in a monastery: If there’s anything you need, please let us know and we’ll show you how to get along without it.
Upon completing my commonplace book, I reviewed each page, looking for emerging patterns or themes. It did not take long for one to jump out at me directly. My commonplace book began with a review of healthy, character-building behaviors, followed by a study of strategy, followed by a deep dive into systems and complexity theory, and concluding with a chapter on meaning-making and metaphysics. It seemed to me very clear that my intellectual and personal development journey had taken me from concrete, specific behaviors to much more abstract territory, by way of exploring content, relationships, context, and meaning.
This map of learning – which I had not been aware of as I was exploring it – may be common to the human experience. It is reflected in the journeys of great thinkers, like Aristotle, who moved from ethics to politics to metaphysics; it is underscored in the field of Developmental Psychology and Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, which move from concrete knowledge to abstract thinking; and it is reflected in aesthetic appreciation theory, such as Philip Yenawine and Abigail Housen’s Visual Thinking Strategies, which articulates the journey art patrons take from observing content to seeing relationships to finding meaning and appreciation.
That’s the nerdy, intellectual take on the value of a commonplace book, but there are some pretty practical takeaways, too. For one, many people have already faced the challenges you now face or are yet to face; their experiences, solutions, and afterthoughts are waiting to be found and are likely of great use to you (From September 30, 2023: Plato’s Theory of Forms says that it is helpful to have a master make you a form to follow so you can model your work after it). For another, learning is developmental, in that you may have to learn a simple, wrong answer before you can learn a complex, right one (From September 4, 2019: Complicated questions have easy, wrong answers.”) Of course, this also means that you may not be able to benefit from the lessons, experiences, and know-how of someone at a different level of development than you, so watch out for that perennial trap.
Lastly, and, most profoundly, has been the way ascending the developmental ladder has unlocked great inspiration and meaning for me from once closed off sources, like poetry and spiritual writings. A great deal of wisdom, truth, and beauty, it turns out, is richly or symbolically embodied in verse, metaphor, and the wider world, in ways inaccessible to the surface reader. Unlocking these helps one understand the world in a more nuanced, loving, and grateful way. Importantly, it turns out, by slowly and experientially shattering simpler notions about the world and our control over it, we do not grow more anxious or fearful, but more confident and more awake to awe and possibility (From January 21, 2021: The barn’s burned down; now I can see the moon).
That seems like a fair trade for the cost of writing down interesting ideas as you encounter them, don’t you think? I do. That’s why I’ll be breaking out a second commonplace book the next time I encounter a flash of inspiration; I can’t wait to see how I grow. Maybe you’ll enjoy giving it a try, also?
Always Getting Better is a periodic newsletter about connecting your values and behaviors. It is written by Kate Cherry, a mom from Michigan, with a penchant for overthinking and a lifelong enjoyment of the written word.