your commonplace book: favorite recipes, quotes from your favorite movies, a list of your heroes, life goals, poems, insights into life, travelogues, important photos, clippings from newspapers, etc.
Step 3: Choose an Organizational System
You may want to have separate sections for books lists, quotes, and other topics, or you may prefer to have all the information in one place. You can organize your commonplace book by adding dividers to your three ring binder, stick-on tabs to your notebook/moleskin, or links to your virtual book.
Decide how you want to organize your commonplace book before you begin writing. That way you won’t be frustrated when searching for entries as the book grows.
Step 3: Keep it Up
Once you’ve started a commonplace book, keep up the work. In a few years, you’ll have an amazing record the books you’ve read, the subjects you’ve studied, and the way your self-education has affected your life.
Share Your Commonplace Book
If you don’t mind sharing, I’d love to publish a collage of sample pages from commonplace books. Often it’s hard to visualize, and a set of pictures would help future readers get a better idea of how they can begin this project.
You can send a photo of your commonplace book (or a screenshot, if you have a digital one) to selfmadscholar at gmail.com. The page doesn’t have to be completely legible in the picture; it just needs to show how a commonplace book can look.
Once I have enough photos, I’ll post on this subject again.
Photo 1: Beinecke Flickr Laboratory – Anonymous manuscript containing poems by various authors, in various hands. Includes Shakespeare’s second sonnet.
Photo 2: ChrisL_AK – My commonplace book of quotations and pictures using the Moleskine japanese fold style notebook