Building a Commonplace Book System that actually works for me

Monday, December 15, 2025

I spend a lot of time reading, across many devices and sources. Much of it is meant to be informative and useful, not just entertainment. The problem is that without some system to capture and process what I’m reading, I don’t think that I’m capturing any meaningful insights.

A commonplace book is a time-tested method for collecting quotes, ideas, and reflections and has appealed to me for a while. I started experimenting with Quick Notes in Apple Notes, journal entries in DayOne, and analog capture in my Field Notes notebook. Each approach had merits, but I quickly realized I was creating three parallel systems driven by technical convenience rather than clear purpose.

The Real Problem: Retrieval, Not Capture

The challenge with commonplace books isn’t capture, it’s retrieval and action. I can fill notebooks with quotes, but if I can’t find them when I need them, what’s the point?

I already have a Safari shortcut that works well: it copies highlighted text from a webpage, prompts for my thoughts, then creates a DayOne entry with the quote, my reflection, and a proper citation. This was the standard I needed to match everywhere else.

The fragmentation problem became clear. When I wanted to reference something I’d read, where would I look? Quick Notes? DayOne? Field Notes? A system that makes me search three places isn’t much of a system.

Establishing Principles

Rather than continuing to accumulate tools, I needed principles:

One source of truth. All reading insights should go to one place, regardless of where I’m reading. The capture method is secondary to having a single, searchable archive.

Quality over convenience. Friction in capture isn’t a bug. If something isn’t worth 30 seconds to capture properly, it’s probably not worth keeping.

Structure should emerge from use. Don’t design an elaborate tagging taxonomy upfront. Start minimal and add structure only when you have a specific retrieval problem to solve.

Don’t redesign around new hardware. I was partly being influenced by having just switched to an iPad mini with an Apple Pencil. The Quick Notes feature felt compelling, but the novelty of new hardware shouldn’t dictate my information architecture.

The Decision

DayOne became the clear choice. It already contained my existing captures with full context and time-stamping. The Safari workflow proved the format worked: quote + thought + citation.

For captures from other sources, I accept manual entry. Yes, it’s more friction than a quick note or photo, but that’s the quality control mechanism. Not every highlighted passage deserves permanent archiving.

Field Notes remains in my daily workflow, but its role is different now. It’s for processing thoughts, not storing them permanently. When I capture analog notes, I flag them for weekly transfer to DayOne, if they’re still worth keeping after some time has passed.

Note to My Future Self

When I’m inevitably tempted to add another capture system, I’ll return to this: the problem is never the tool. The problem is fragmenting my attention and information across multiple incompatible systems.

The goal isn’t the perfect commonplace book. It’s having a system reliable enough that I actually use it, simple enough that it doesn’t become a project itself, and effective enough that I can find what I’m looking for.