Commonplace Book - Collaboration

[Ethan1]

OK. So I was curious to hear how people organize their commonplace book. I was curious to get some new ideas. As well as sharing some of my own ideas.

 

I have a notebook specifically for ideas. Any ideas that come to mind I add to a list of ideas. Then organize & prioritize. I'd like to become more focused with this list of ideas and plan a few days to do deep contemplation for each idea. Slowly work down the list. Starting with ideas I see have the greatest value. 

 

I see that I'm in the stage of Convergent thinking. Listing as many ideas as possible. I plan on coming back later on to do the divergent thinking and deep thinking. Trying to create a system of thought to balance out everything. Not allowing my monkey mind to invest time and energy aimlessly or mental masturbate. More intentional with how I use my mind so that my mind isn't running all over the place. 

I'd like to keep things simple to access. Not too many notebooks to get scattered and lost in the information. Trying to find the balance. A balance of attention & intention.

 

I have 4 Notebooks

1. MAIN

2. PROJECTS

3. GOALS

4. MISC

 

• I prefer to use the desktop app b/c it's easiest to enter information.
• I am using the app on the go to quickly add ideas. 
• I am trying to get in the habit of planning each day in a journal.
• I keep projects in a separate Notebook to break down large projects into actionable tasks.
• I want to get better with setting goals but not sure how to arrange them. Curious how people arrange their goals.
• I use tons of internal links on my idea page to have a quick way to access information and brain dump information/organize. 
• I try to use plenty of images in my pages to keep it creative and interesting to dive in to. 

 

Important ideas to improve the system :

• Attention & focus .. Mindfulness
• Distractions & monkey mind 
• Contemplation - Not becoming scattered with the information overload.
• Organizing - Creating an unorganized information system is worthless.

 

What have you done that has helped the most? 

What are ideas do you see worth prioritizing to accelerate this? 

What ways do your organize your system? Such as lists & columns.. 

 

Curious to hear what you do with your commonplace book! 

Edited May 12, 2020 by Ethan1

[Mike Book]

Holy fuck dude thank you for this post this is what I'm missing. I love the idea of planning out your day beforehand. I don't have a lot to contribute to the conversation rn I need to make my own commonplace book. I'll keep in touch

[Ethan1]

@Mike BookYeah man, I've been looking in the forum for someone discussing directly about their ideas for the common place book. Doesn't seem to be anyone discussing or collaborating. If there was a discussion it was mostly about which version or simple things. 

Feel free to post on here what you have going on. I'm still working on my little system. 

I'm more curious about the foundation and those that use it on a daily basis. Integrated into a personal wiki or a 2nd brain to collect information. The brain is a processing machine. Not a memory machine that hold RAM. The brain gets bogged down after a simple math problem. Let alone all the daily tasks we all hold each day or projects. 

I have tons of questions about ideas that I get curious about throughout the day but it's never intentional thinking. It's more scattered like, hey let's ask the all knowing Google real quick and not really comprehend the full idea. Compared to observing with pure intention and having a more clear understanding. Especially directing attention at the top 20% of ideas that appear important. 

Especially these days with the unlimited amount of things to direct attentions towards. Helps to organize and allocate energy more intentionally. 

 

[Ethan1]

@Mike Book

So for right now you can see that I'm just adding random ideas. Creating links on one main page for all the ideas. Then slowly build a page of interests. Then hopefully I plan on reorganizing. Prioritizing based on categories. Then dedicate a certain amount of time to find information further down. Breadth vs depth. 

Next I just have a daily journal to brain dump. Talking about the day. Then a separate journal for strictly planning. 

[Ethan1]

Another example is with having project folders. I see having a dedicated place to organize projects is helpful for project management. 

For example, I have a travel trailer I'm working on. I basically walked around took pictures from all angles. Drew out all the things that need to be fixed. Drew out things I'd like to upgrade with a different color. Then labeled on the side the tasks arranged in order. Highlighting the critical tasks in red. 

It's helpful to glance at instead of walking around and wasting time having to remember everything. Pull out the phone and it's right there. Then delete the task as I go along. Easy to create like a mindmap too in order to break a task into subtasks too. Then visually see it with photos. Talk about mind mapping. It's very simple and clean. 

[Ethan1]

I've kinda arranged my goals in this way. I'd like to break down goals into categories and set microgoals each month. Trying to figure out exactly the goal setting process but I do like the format so far. Written goals are more often complete then those that aren't written. 

[Ethan1]

I also found this useful. Creating a check list of items to buy. Such as for a car. This is listed for the travel trailer. Random ass things I spontaneously think of. Organize and prioritize. Then find the item off offerup, Mercari, or ebay for a fraction of the retail price.