Build A Second Brain with Commonplace Notebooks: A Complete Guide

foreign [Music] policing has been something that I've been doing for a while now it has literally helped me to have a second brain that is what my Commonplace Notebook is for me I can go back and reference material and things that were important to me that I want to remember for self-development to grow to help me achieve my goals or just quotes that really touched me things like that are in my Commonplace Notebook now when I got started with commonplace saying I didn't know where to begin I didn't really understand what was the purpose of it but I knew that I wanted something like that and I kind of had something like that before as a system but since I've got into common placing I've developed a much better system for keeping a Commonplace Notebook that helps me to be able to learn and grow as a person now today I'm going to share with you a total guide to commonplace notebooks where and when it got started why are they commonplace notebooks why you'll want to have a Commonplace Notebook and how you can create your own step by step the common pleasing tradition started out from medieval times in medieval Latin the word floral legium or the plural version of floraligia was a compilation of excerpts or sentencia from other writings and medieval Flora Gia were systematic collections of extracts taken mainly from the writings of the church fathers from early Christian authors also pagans philosophers such as Aristotle and sometimes classical writings a prime example is the manipulous Forum of Thomas of Ireland which was completed at the beginning of the 14th century the purpose was to take passages that Illustrated certain topics doctrines or themes after the medieval period the term was extended to apply to any miscellany or compilation of literary or scientific character the word floridium has the Latin prefix flows which means flower and legere the suffix to gather literally a gathering of flowers or a collection of fine extracts from the body of a larger work it was adapted from the Greek word anthologia and today's modern times in English it would be Anthology with the same etymological meaning anthology of course means a book or collection of selected writings by various authors usually in the same literary form or a time period or on the same subject now when it comes to your Commonplace Notebook you don't have to have a collection of quotes or topics or similar writings that are from the same book or on the same topic they can be a variety of different topics and themes that mean something to you so let's get started on how you can start setting up your own Commonplace Notebook when it comes to choosing a notebook for your Commonplace Notebook I highly suggest that you pick something that is either pocket size passport size or A6 size this way it's something that you can carry with you or even the size that I have Behind These notebooks the weak size I wouldn't recommend anything bigger than these sizes because you want to be able to carry it with you this way you can jot notes and things down that you want to remember for later remember this is going to be your second brain it's a collection of quotes and different things that mean something to you that you want to reference later on there may be times where you're out and about and you hear something or you see something that you want to write down and remember for later to refer to it in the future and I'm not just talking about something that you're going to reference one time this is something that you're going to probably reference a couple of times that is what your Commonplace Notebook is for so I highly suggest something small I wouldn't go for something that's going to to be an A5 size or even a B6 size because you're not going to be able to just put it in your pocket or put it in a small bag now when it comes to Common placing yourself there are different ways to do it with the Commonplace Notebook as you see here I have an index now I've done it different ways you can have the index on the different topics these are the topics that I chose your topics may be very different maybe has to do with family maybe it has to do with your house or some other hobby that is important to you maybe it's knitting and you might want to add that to your index or your table of contents now with the back of my hobonichi that used to be my social media planner I started out this way this is another way that you can do it you can just write down the page number you can add the page number to these Pages because it doesn't have the page number or the notebook that you're using that doesn't have one or if it has one then it's easy to just write it down that's another way you can easily reference and know where things are the reason why I suggest either using this color coding system or using this system where you put the exact page number is because when the time comes and you want to find it you don't want to have to flip through a million pages to be able to to find it you want to be able to just get to what you need to get it read it reference it and move on now when it comes to actually writing down the things in your Commonplace Notebook there are a variety of ways that you can do it I've seen some people add pictures you might want to add a picture if you're into art and that's what you want to have a collection of maybe some references of art or some terms for art then you might want to add a picture or two of course make sure that you leave that space for it now when it comes to the actual page of course again I highly suggest that you add a divider to your page now either it could be the left side or it could be the right side or it could be both on the left side of the page for the left Page on the right side of the page for the right page it depends on what works for you this way you kind of write exactly what this passage quotes or term is about now if I have the definition here again I have the word floralgia here I am putting right here to the left what the word is and then the definition then I also know where these quotes came from bullet Journal notes over here then I have the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Under the category of Integrity I can exactly know where this came from in the book or where I got the quote from these quotes over here I know who they are by because I wrote the name next to it again if I want to look for more quotes under that specific person of course I can't do with unknown but I can do it with everyone else Aristotle Socrates Lewis Carroll and so on it makes it very easy to find those things this is why you want to make sure that you clearly divided as well as you can see that I divide each separate topic quote or passage that I write in here this way I know that this is just the area for this and here it makes it easier to divide it and see exactly where everything is when I started out I made a mistake and I didn't do that I kind of just wrote down different passages and just divided it a little bit I didn't have this little index on the left side for me to be able to know exactly where it came from I kind of just put the title sometimes at the top and sometimes I didn't now when it came to starting to change it and make it a little bit more organized as you can see I started to change it a little bit and here because I didn't use the color coding I just shortened the title of each category of my index so I have self-development I just put self hyphen d e v and then for YouTube YT slash SD right so it was also YouTube and self development under that that's how I started out but again it made it a little bit more difficult to be able to find things it wasn't the worst system but I found that this system was just a little bit better for me as far as not having to write down the pages because that can end up taking up a lot of space over time of course make sure at the beginning of your Commonplace Notebook do not just start the index here and then not give yourself an extra page or two give yourself an extra page or two like you see right here because I have this extra page or two I can add more categories for my index table of contents here if I need to but if I didn't add these extra pages it may have to be shortened a little bit also be careful with adding flowers and decoration to it of course add it if you want to I'm just trying to keep it more functional and neat for myself but you can add it but again keep in mind maybe you just would want to put it around it here this way you can still add those other categories to this and then from there again just start creating your lines to the left or the right side whichever works for you write the title of whatever it is that you're going to be writing about that is important to you chapter the name of the book and then on the right side if this is how you want to have it set up to me this is a really simple and functional way you'll see a lot of people actually do it very similar to mines and you just jot down what is important to you that you want to keep a reference of for your second brain very easy and simple to do as I find things that are important to me I add it now of course I do not add everything to this notebook again it's only things that are important that I want to reference later and not one time if it's one time I will put that in my planner or I will jot that down in my journal or one of my other tiny little notebooks that are probably going to toss away within a couple of months but because I'm going to keep in this for the long term it's you know my second brain of course again it's going to be your second braid I want to put things here that I am probably going to want to reference time and time again and that's what you're going to want to put in your book too I do this a lot with the books that I read all the books that I've told you guys that I've been reading I have some more books that I'm reading from all of these you will find little excerpts in this Commonplace Notebook and that's what it's all about all the quotes and things that I find as well or poems that are important to me again whatever hobby you have you can put some details in there that you want to keep referencing over and over again trust me you will enjoy having a notebook like this it is a great tool to have this way you're not wasting time researching things over and over again especially again those things that are important to you you don't have to research them over and over again you just want to have something right here reference it until you probably will memorize it eventually or again it just has those details that you need to be able to do certain things for yourself to have that self-development and achieve your goals and just get things done even in your daily life if you guys have any questions about commonplace notebooks let me know in the comments below I'll definitely get back to I love chatting with you guys and if you have kept a Commonplace Notebook for a long time let me know what's the amount of time that you've kept the Commonplace Notebook a couple of years a couple of months and then how do you commonplace as well do you commonly simply just like I do or do you do it a little differently I'm always curious to know you never know might find a new way to commonplace that I might like even better I'll see you guys next time have a great day planning in one life and make sure to check out the private planning community on patreon down below take care bye [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Plan Your One Life

Views: 187,993

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Id: j4h2rZgniyk

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023