Commonplace

a quarterly for the well-kept second brain

Feature · The Cover Essay

On keeping a
commonplace book
in the age of the feed.

By The Editors · Illustrations by Mira Halász · 14 min read

For four centuries, thinking people kept a single, ever-growing book — the commonplace. Into it they copied what struck them: a passage, a recipe, a diagram, an overheard phrase. The book was not organized by topic. It was organized by attention.

Locke kept one. Jefferson kept one. Virginia Woolf kept one. The book was a telescope pointed at the life of its keeper — a record not of what the world contained, but of what the keeper found worth noticing.

We built The Commonplace — the software and this quarterly that carries its name — because the feed cannot replace this habit. It can only distract from it.

This issue: three essays on attention, an extract from Locke's notebook, a method for re-reading your own mind, and a guide to starting your first commonplace book today.

Begin your book Continue the essay →

Section II

The Method

as practiced since 1685, adapted for the glass rectangle

The Capture

A single keystroke opens a page. What you copy into the book today is a gift to the reader you will become. Do not classify. Do not tag. Simply write.

II.

The Fermentation

The notes sit. They age. Weeks pass. The Commonplace quietly draws connections between them — suggesting, never imposing. The value of a note grows the longer it waits.

III.

The Revisit

Each morning, the book opens to what you wrote on this day, years past. You re-read yourself. You edit. You discover you have been circling the same idea for seven years.

Pl. I — A page from the editor's commonplace, April 2026. Note the marginal index in amber.

Correspondence

What our readers write.

“The Commonplace is the only place where my reading, my letters to friends, and my half-formed hunches all live together. It has quietly become the most important book I own.”

— Prof. D. Akinwale, Oxford

“I was a devoted user of several other apps. I did not realize I was organizing instead of thinking. This fixed that.”

— R. Bergström, architect

“A second brain that respects the first.”

— The Paris Review

Begin a book you will
reread all your life.

The Commonplace is free for individuals. The quarterly ships four times a year. Your notebook, always and forever, belongs to you.

No advertisements · No "newsletters" · We will only write when we have something to say.