How To Keep A Commonplace Book - 2022 Edition

so just a quick note before we start today's video this video is going to be about how to keep a common place book which is a topic that i've talked about before but this is a revised version and this is going to be a really exciting episode i put a lot of work in into this one before i dump that entire load on you i've recently launched a course that's very relevant to this video actually on how to keep a writer's diary on skillshare i've never really talked about this course just yet on this on this channel explicitly because i want people to get some value from it first before i promote it but here it is if you find what i'm saying this episode relevant be sure to check out this course link in the description down below and right now skillshare is offering all of you guys a one month free trial if you sign up for my link so happy learning and happy journaling enjoy this video in the age of information overload and in the age where you can basically learn anything from the internet i think for us as creatives and as students of life it's very important to keep around a common place book now i've talked about the common place book numerous times before on this channel but here is basically a rundown of my new version of a commonplace book and how this is slightly different from how i used to do things before first the concept of a commonplace book very simply your common place book is basically your second brain your common place book is simply where you keep your insights ideas all your notes from books or things that you want to potentially remember and it serves as a place where you can mingle different ideas together where you can mingle together different ideas from different fields of discipline different ideas about life different ideas about different theories and different ideas about different books that you've read because at the end of the day creativity is all about associating different ideas together and finding that intersection between various ideas and various forms of expression and various forms of communication so if you want to keep a backlog of your ideas a backlog of some of the things that were on your mind here is a really great way for you to get started with basically replicating your brain or storing your brain into a system that you can trust [Music] [Music] i used to keep a common facebook on my computer but the problem that i found over time was that it simply turned into another bank of overloaded information another bank of stress and anxiety that i had to deal with instead of just enjoying a book or instead of just getting an idea down i had to open up my computer i had to hop on my computer had to open up whatever word document that i was working on or open up notion and dump everything in there and i don't know about you but the act of typing really discourages me away from noting anything down because that entire process just felt so inorganic just felt kind of wrong at least for me the commonplace book itself eventually turns into this very impersonal thing it turns into this very impersonal file on your computer this very impersonal page on notion and for me that's just not how i want to do things in 2022. so here are three reasons why i've decided to keep my common placebook on paper with a fountain pen reason number one is that when i actually write things down it somehow means a lot more than just typing it down because with typing you can simply type a lot more than you can note down in a notebook and before you commit words onto a page you have to think about what you want to put down because writing takes a lot more effort in typing the worst thing at least for me that you can do when you keep a common placebook is to somehow treat this common placebook on your computer just as another form of oh maybe i should put this down maybe i should put that down so over time it becomes an obligation it's no longer your real thoughts it's no longer a collection of things that you consider as important but it's a collection of things that you think oh this is going to add to this bank of knowledge that i have this is going to add to a bank of ideas that i have so let me check that in there over time you're basically going to end up with this collection of pretty mediocre ideas but hey because it boosts up the volume of your common placebook and it doesn't take much effort to putting put it into your computer it's easier to dump relevant stuff in there whereas if you work at it with a pen and paper like i do right now in 2022 on a moleskine this is a moleskine notebook every idea matters so now instead of writing paragraphs into my commonplace book i typically just collect very succinct quotes from biographies that i've read from books that i've read or from articles from of the internet that i've read and over time i ended up with this collection of very succinct sentences that but basically every one of these sentences they mean something every one of these words they mean something every expression that i put into this book they're all very deeply personal for me and also the act of writing for me is very personal because writing for me and journaling for me is a form of calming the brain because my brain does not shut up so point one keeping a common placebook on a physical notebook is a lot more deliberate i think at least for me than keeping it on my computer the second reason why uh applies to writers a lot more than anyone else if you're a visual artist or a designer this might not apply to you but this also might apply to you is that when you write things down physically there's no way there's no backspace for you to change it especially when i'm working on my current scrapbook blog project so if you haven't checked out scrapbook it's basically a collection of my thoughts on creativity art and literature condensed into very short articles whenever i draft one of these articles before on my computer it's very hard for me to find points of improvement so basically every blog post ends up being the first draft on the first draft first go basis so i have no room to play around with ideas or potentially improve this article because ideas always look very perfect in your brain and when you set it down it's always messier on paper or it's always a messier idea but a problem with keeping these ideas on a computer is that when you type it out it just looks perfect right out of the gate when you type it out it just looks like the final thing there's no room to play around with things there's absolutely no blank space for you to consider hey maybe i can do this differently maybe i can do that differently on a physical notebook however as you can see for this scrapbook post right here that i'm currently drafting it is written with crosses it is written with uh marks and rewrites writing on the paper at least for me liberates me from that uh illusion of perfection illusion of cleanliness that i get on a computer screen because i can cross everything out i can cross things out straight away and i can spot mistakes and you know weak sentences straight away so by the time that i get to my computer by the time that i type this out and put it on my blog it's basically the third or fourth draft of the writing instead of shying away from imperfect writing writing on a notebook at least for me drafting these blog posts on art on creativity on my scrapbook it really encouraged me to rewrite everything five times over it really alleviated that kind of laziness of like oh man i have to rewrite this entire thing again and the act of crossing things out on paper it's actually very satisfying and the act of seeing the final product finally typed out on a computer for me that's just a more satisfying workflow so if you want to improve your writing if you want to improve your communication skills via writing consider keeping a physical notebook or consider drafting everything on paper and enjoy the process of crossing things out and enjoy this process of gradually discovering the gold in a pile of and the last reason why i decided to keep everything on a physical notebook is that we have to bring back this vision of being multi-disciplined or multifaceted you're not just a literature person if you're into literature on some level you're also into art you're also into appreciation of you know different art forms as creative people if you really want to be creative it helps for you to explore multiple disciplines so instead of just getting stuck in writing or getting stuck in literature consider other disciplines because the best ideas usually come to you through crossing different ideas together this is the sole job of multi-potential iron is that you want to find an intersection between different forms of art different expressions and through gaining inspiration from all of these fields through gaining inspiration from all of these disciplines you can then find an intersection and produce something entirely new produce something very fascinating and recently i've developed quite an obsession with the fashion industry and this is something that's been a hidden passion of mine for the longest time but recently it's been the first time that i've actually decided to deliberately study the history of this form the history of this art form and where did their inspiration come from what made address what it was or what made a brand what it was so this is currently my obsession and this is currently kind of like what i'm trying to understand and with the exploration of fashion comes a lot of sketching because a big part of fashion studying fashion we're a big part of trying to understand the form of a figure the form of couture it's all about sketching out an idea so on a computer unless you have an ipad pro or something it's pretty difficult to sketch on a computer i've tried to use my track pack but man that was just a solid nightmare instead i have this unruled sort of notebook from all skin so in a sense i can just go blue sky mode and have paragraphs of writing intermingle with sketches on this book and it's all about connecting different ideas together for me and it's all about keeping this notebook very personal for me so it's a free space for me to really associate it for our forms together from sketching to writing from writing to design from design to well some quotes that i've harvested from it from a book somewhere essentially this is a deeply personal endeavor and you don't have to adopt my system this is just how i do things but you need to find a way to keep your ideas fresh to keep your ideas deeply personal otherwise if you keep your common placebook in a way where you're just gathering random information i think you can just search everything up on google there's no point keeping your own version of google so find a way to keep these ideas personal this is my system adopted if you want to adopt it but if you have your own system make sure to tell me what your system is like when it comes down to collecting thoughts ideas and creative ventures and this is all i have for today and rc walden here and i will see you and i look forward to hearing from you about your commonplace book and i'll see you in the next video thank you for watching

Channel: Robin Waldun

Views: 562,224

Keywords: commonplace book ideas, commonplace book ryan holiday, how to keep a commonplace book, rc waldun commonplace book, how to journal, writer's diary, journaling basics, commonplace book, starting a commonplace book

Id: NPqjgN-pNDw

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022