Commonplace book

I just found out about commonplace books (aka commonplaces) and I am so jazzed about this idea!   They were books that were somewhat popular back in the 1700's and go back as far as the 1500's. This tool became useful as a memory to record remarkable thoughts and lessons. They are notebooks created by a person to collect their observations in the form of recipes, quotes, letters, poetry, data tables, lessons, songs, formulas, etc. in an organized fashion for reference purposes.   It was used to not only capture original thoughts, but also those of others that you adapt as your own.

Each commonplace book is completely customized by the writer and it becomes a collection of their treasured wisdom, stamped with their personality, sharing their way of making sense of the world.  These became information management devices.  Carl Linnaeus, for instance, used commonplacing techniques to invent and arrange the nomenclature of his Systema Naturae (which is the basis for the system used by scientists today." [1]

There is a lot of cool associated history and I look forward to exploring this more.  There is a specific approach written by John Locke which shares specific techniques to organize the content.

This has inspired me to create an e-version of this on my blog.  How fun it would be to see and build all of the content that inspires, informs, and impacts personally in one location!

Reference:

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
• http://www.pem.org/library/blog/?p=687&mc_cid=b05f9d9286&mc_eid=64e6ee27d5