One book to rule them all...

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A few days ago, I read this blog post by friend and fellow writer Javacia Harris-Bowser - the founder of the See Jane Write community - and past guest on the Writing Black Joy podcast. She wrote about her journal ecosystem, and the different journals that she uses - something that she and I discussed at length during the podcast conversation. In addition, it is a conversation I have often with my sister - who also has a variety of journals that she uses for different areas of her life.

Now - I should start by saying - I am not a journaler - something I have discussed in previous blog posts. However, a couple of years ago, I bought a bullet journal for my sister, and on a whim, I decided to get one for myself. 

It was one of my favourite decisions, and while I wouldn’t describe what came next as a lesson learned, instead I would call it a practice that I have leaned into in this particular season of my life and that is the practice my friend Sarah calls “One source of truth”, or as I like to call - one book to rule them all.

The commonplace book.

Some years ago, I read the book “Building a second brain” by Tiago Forte. It is about building a digital system so that you can free up the brain space you are using for storage by having a system that makes it not only easy to store, but also to access information.

I loved the idea of building a second brain. When I was a teenager, studying for A-levels and trying to remember a million mathematical and chemical formulae, physics principles, and birthdays of several disconnected groups of friends, I finally admitted to myself that my memory was not good, and it probably wasn’t going to cope with all of that, and I bought my first planner - of many. My planner was always a place for me to make note of the things that I wanted to have knowledge of without needing to commit to memory (although in all fairness - I still remember most of those birthdays!) and it is a practice that I have kept to this day - even if it has changed form over the years. These days I do love a large wall calendar, and a weekly whiteboard on the fridge. 

Something that Forte mentioned in his book was an old-fashioned practice of keeping something called a “commonplace book”. This is a book that would have been kept in the past by folks, and contained a mixture of content including quotes, sketches, brainstorming ideas and more. And he described what sometimes felt like the magic that would happen in the commonplace book as seemingly disconnected ideas suddenly felt connected. I loved hearing about this - especially because one of my favourite things to do is to attempt to connect ideas that feel disconnected. 

Just after I read the book, a friend and I each started keeping a digital file where we dropped everything - from links to random bits of writing. It was great in the sense of being digitally searchable - however I never really looked back through the document which soon became over a hundred pages long. I loved the idea of having one “drop zone” but something wasn’t working about it, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. In the meantime, I had a few notebooks that I used - one for work related notes (I even tried one with built in dividers) and another personal one for blog ideas, and other random notes and lists. 

Then, a few weeks after I purchased the bullet journal, I suddenly wondered what it would be like to try keeping a commonplace book. Nothing else was working. Keeping my “work stuff” separated from “personal stuff” was an issue because some of the things I did in work defied simple categorisation, and I didn’t want to have 10 or 15 folders or dividers to look through every time I wanted to find something that I couldn’t remember how I had categorised it. But also because I am one person - with one brain. And sometimes I found myself struggling with having to keep track of a number of different books.

So - what if I just put everything in one book.

All the podcast and blog ideas.

All the lists - to do lists for work and personal.

All the notes for things I needed to do at work and at home.

Random sketches and song lyrics, and the poems I wrote for my friend’s Christmas (and new years) cards.

No more decisions about which category things fell into. If it popped into my brain, it was going into the book. 

Surprisingly it worked like a treat!

I loved removing the decision about what category to fit something in before I wrote it down. I loved closing the gap between having an idea and writing it down and fleshing it out. And more than anything I LOVED knowing where everything was. Did I need to see what tasks I had to finish for the Masters module? It was in the book. What about the grocery list or the budget, or the dates for my student facing sessions? Always in the book. I hadn’t anticipated how much it would simplify both work and home life. 

In addition, I was reminded that my brain loves a tangible tag. One of my fears around having everything in one book was that I would spend so much time flipping through the pages trying to find stuff. However, first of all the book has not one by two bookmarks. And secondly, my brain somehow could remember writing the due date for some module content halfway down a page, three pages ago, opposite the poem I wrote about cross stitch (yup- true story). Having one book felt less like a new habit, and more like returning to the way my brain likes to do things. And true enough - the magic of ideas coming together simply due to proximity happened as well. 

For me - the commonplace book is here to stay - at least for this season. But one of the things I loved about reading Javacia’s article was shining a light onto the reality that - there are many different ways to organise our thoughts and lives. For some of us - it’s a journal ecosystem - with a number of journals to keep things in order. For others it’s online documents and a personalised chat GPT project. And for me - it’s a wall calendar, a whiteboard type of thing that is magnetically attached to my fridge - and a commonplace book.

What do you use to keep you organised?

I send you big love!