🥁 What 14 Years of Keeping a Commonplace Book Has Taught Me

The practice that changed how I read, think, and make things

I’m Allison Stadd, drummer turned CMO, and I write for people who want the way we work to work for us.

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This issue’s soundtrack:

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On April 5, 2012, at 12:08PM I started a fresh Google Doc, titled it “LifeLines,” and typed in a few quotes, notes, and sentence fragments I’d kept in a loose leaf notebook.

That doc is now 39 pages long, brimming with size-11-font, single-spaced lines of excerpts, one-liners, and passages from books, articles, lectures and conversations that snagged on the teeth of my brain.

It’s a simple, digital version of a commonplace book, a notebook used to collect knowledge, quotes, proverbs, and observations.

The practice dates back to antiquity, when ancient Greek speakers in law courts or political meetings would keep an assortment of arguments in a “common place” for easy reference. Renaissance humanists like John Locke and Francis Bacon kept commonplace books.

Color me crazy, but I credit my commonplace book with keeping me stable and grounded amidst career challenges, supplying me with ideas for this very newsletter, even helping calibrate my artistic taste.

If you’re curious about keeping one, or you already do but want some inspiration from how I use mine (it’s not just dumping a bunch of quotes in a doc), let’s talk about the mechanics.

What’s a commonplace book?

A commonplace book is a personal, curated notebook (physical or digital) used to collect quotes, passages, and ideas that resonate with you.

I felt my life with both my hands

To see if it was there—

I held my spirit to the Glass,

To prove it possibler—

—from “#351” by Emily Dickinson

It isn’t a journal, nor a productivity system, nor a Notion database. It’s a collection practice. It’s a repository for the language that draws you, whether it’s a poem, a quote, or something overheard at a work meeting.

“Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home.” — Will Ahmed, CEO of Whoop

What my 14-year commonplace book practice has taught me

There’s richness in unexpected juxtaposition

Since I use a Google Doc, I don’t categorize or sort—I can so easily search and browse for what I want. A lovely outcome of this is that my commonplace book has an Eleanor Roosevelt quote next to something my Art History professor said; a Molly Oliver poem next to a line of copy from the Schoolhouse Electric website. This melange of creative miscellany sparks fresh thoughts every time I scroll through it, by virtue of it being so random and varied.

Curation is a form of autobiography

I can infer so much about myself when I see the additions I made to the doc in which years. I was on a big classic novel kick in the early 2010s—no kids yet, ample free time to luxuriate in doorstop books—and discovered the poet Rupi Kaur during COVID in 2020. In this way my commonplace book is like my own living time capsule.

Being a quote collector tunes your creative antenna

Without even realizing I’m doing it, I’ve always got my ears tuned for interesting quotes, phrases, and lines to add to my LifeLines doc. If it weren’t for my commonplace book I don’t know that I’d have honed this habit so acutely. And it benefits me way beyond this one practice; it makes me a better listener, and a better marketer.

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” — Rilke

How to start a commonplace book

Options abound if you want to give this a go:

1. Use an iPhone Note, or a Google Doc like I do

2. There are also tools like Sari Azout’s beautiful Sublime (“the knowledge tool that sparks creativity”) as well as Are.na (an “Internet memory palace”) that let you curate not just text but images

3. If that multimedia approach intrigues you, there’s always Pinterest or even, dare I say, Tumblr?!

4. And if you want to keep it analogue, knock yourself out! I love these personalizable, refillable Mark & Graham notebooks

Within your container, there are zero rules. Just start adding tidbits that make you feel something, whether it’s motivated, intrigued, validated, or whatever else.

My sources range from books I’m reading to articles and newsletters, from song lyrics to podcast and TV episodes ⤵

“You want to change? Then change.” — Libby on ABC’s LOST

Why keeping a commonplace book matters right now

In my experience, a commonplace book is a counter-practice to drowning in Slack pings, AI slop, email oblivion and infinite scroll.

Where social media gives you other people's curated thoughts, a commonplace book gives you your own.

Fourteen years in, my LifeLines doc has become less a notebook and more a rich record of what I've been paying attention to, and who I've been becoming because of it.

One of my earliest and favorite additions is this quote from my creative writing professor: “Writing is like reading braille on the cave wall of your mind.”

Keeping a commonplace book helps me shine a flashlight on that wall.

Have a great week,

Allison

P.S. Paid subscribers get access to The Workroom 🔐, a bank of juicy extras like templates, resources & discounts that I update regularly. Every tool & perk in this archive is built from almost 20 years inside some of the most high-growth, fast-paced companies in the country (Anheuser-Busch InBev, Shake Shack, Sweetgreen, Shipt, BarkBox). They also get access to job opportunities from my personal network, in The Creativity of Work chat.

Folks across 42 U.S. states and 73 countries from companies like LVMH, Unilever, Salesforce, The Atlantic, and The Home Depot are reading along. You in?

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