Ep 50: The Commonplace
SUMMARY
As creatives, we're constantly bombarded with ideas, feedback, and inspiration. But how often do those brilliant thoughts slip away because we didn't have a system to capture them? In this episode, I dive deep into the concept of the "commonplace" - a simple yet powerful tool that can transform your creative process from chaos to clarity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Key Takeaway #1: Choose ONE capture tool and stick with it for at least 90 days to build the habit.
⚡️ Key Takeaway #2: Categorize your captures to make weekly reviews more efficient and actionable.
⚡️ Key Takeaway #3: Schedule a weekly review session to process your captures and move items into your planning system.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "We as creatives can be the most scatterbrained people on the planet. We have a plethora of ideas, feedback, social hangs, memos, briefings, all filling our minds on an endless cycle of information."
💬 "In order for a change to happen, a change must be made."
💬 "Your commonplace is no good if you don't return to it regularly."
EPISODE RESOURCES
⚡️Austin Kleon's Newsletter - Where I first learned about commonplace journals
⚡️Full Focus Planner - My weekly planning system
⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone, I'm Dustin Pead and today I want to talk to you about the commonplace. Episode 50 of the Creativity Made Easy podcast. Let's face it, we as creatives can be the most scatterbrained people on the planet. We have a plethora of ideas, feedback, social hangs, memos, briefings, all filling our minds on an endless cycle of information. This ultimately leads to a mental breakdown or constantly dropping the ball. We need a tool that can help collect all of this data for the greater good of ourselves and those around us. Today we're going to talk about the commonplace. Let's get into it.
Welcome back to the podcast everyone. My name is Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I want to remind you before we get started that I'm here and all the content that I'm releasing throughout the week - I'm here to help creatives know themselves, their process, and their team so that they can create greater things together. If you're listening to this on an audio podcast platform, I would super appreciate a five-star rating and review. This really helps get the content out further on people's algorithms as they're searching for different ways to increase their creativity and process and productivity and all the things that we talk about here on the show.
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All right, on to the show. Today we're going to talk about the commonplace. I first discovered this term "the commonplace" or "commonplace journal" from Austin Kleon. Now if you've listened to my show or watched any of the content that I've put out before or follow me on social media, you know that I'm a huge Austin Kleon fan. Austin Kleon wrote the book and a series of books called "Steal Like an Artist," "Show Your Work," and then "Keep Going" were the three books, but "Steal Like an Artist" kind of changed the game for a lot of people. And he's pretty famous for that.
So I was following him and I subscribed to his Substack newsletter that he puts out every week, a lot of times during the week for some small stuff, but on Sunday he'll release a bigger version for everyone. I was listening or reading that and I noticed that he was talking about this commonplace journal a lot. And so I began to dig into it. I asked for one for Christmas. I got one because I'm a journal nerd, full confession. Journal nerd. If I had eight journals that would fill my soul. I also know that I can be a little bit too scatterbrained sometimes and eight journals may not be the best thing for me.
So recently in the last few months, I've began to kind of narrow down my eight journals and now I only use three real writing devices. I use my Full Focus planner, which we've talked about on here before. I use my Remarkable, which I just got turned on to at the end of last year for all my mind dump and note taking stuff, which we'll talk a little bit about today. But then I also use this little book called a commonplace journal.
Now for me, I use my commonplace journal as a place to kind of put one thought or one quote that I heard every day in there. Now the commonplace journal that I got is made for an entry a day every day for five years. And so I'll be able to kind of put that up on my shelf one day, hand it down to my kids, and they'll have a book of quotes and wisdom that I curated over a span of time in my life.
But today, more specifically, I want to talk to you about a commonplace for you to capture all your thoughts and capture all your ideas. A commonplace traditionally is some type of personal compilation of knowledge of ideas, quotations, observations collected by an individual, but it's also a place for you to kind of dump everything that comes into your head. Because if we keep it all between our ears, trust me, it's going to end in mass chaos and failure. And you're not going to know where it came from. You're not going to know which way is up.
So I was reading this morning, actually, in a different Substack newsletter, which if you're not reading some of these writings on Substack, there's some fantastic writers out there. I myself am on Substack. I release content on there a couple of times a week. Some extra content for paid subscribers and then a free newsletter that goes out every Sunday, kind of recapping all the content that I've released or curated throughout the week.
But I was reading one this morning from Nick Baker. Nick Baker has this fantastic newsletter that he releases every Tuesday and it's called Tuesday T-W-O-S-day because he covers kind of two topics in that newsletter every week when he releases it. And today he was talking about this kind of place, these lists for people to kind of, and why he uses lists and why he loves lists so much and kind of encouraging people as a way to like, hey, you kind of need some lists to create some order in your life, which we'll talk about in a second.
But he says this in his write at the top of his newsletter today and it stood out to me and I was like, I have to share this on the podcast with y'all. He says, "I have to-do's, gratitude list, even friends list. My lists sometimes have lists. They help me visualize order amid chaos. They also give me a mental framework for making decisions." I want to say that again. "They help me visualize order amid chaos." That's what lists do for him. "And they also give me a mental framework for making decisions."
Listen, I know as a creative you love to kind of live in the free spirit world, but order will always trump chaos. If you're a believer like me, you know that our God is a God of order, right? He's not a God of confusion. So if you are kind of fed up living in this constant mental chaos of like, I just don't even know which way is up. I don't - I'm constantly dropping balls. I'm constantly forgetting things. I had an idea. I don't remember what it was. It could have been life changing. Who knows? I didn't write it down.
Listen, in order for a change to happen, a change must be made. I heard a pastor that I worked under for several years say this many years ago and it kind of blew me away. It sounds so simple, right? Obviously in order for a change to happen a change must be made. But for me something clicked in my mind and it was a mental kind of awakening of like oh yeah, if I don't want to live like this anymore - fill in the blank whatever it is for you - I have to change what I'm doing. Otherwise, it's going to continue to be the same thing over and over again and that stuck with me for many years. So in order for a change to happen a change must be made.
Listen, in order to recognize the constant feed that's coming your way, you need to have one consistent place where you can jot down ideas and return to that place regularly. I suggest once a week and I would say schedule time to review this place of notes, this place of ideas.
I've gone back and forth over the years on different types of tools. This could be as simple as an iPhone notes app. Or it could be Evernote if you're still using Evernote. God bless you. It could be a field guide that fits in your pocket. I did that for a while. It could be sticky notes. I worked with a person who had sticky notes all over the wall of their desk area and it worked for them. They didn't forget anything. And that was what worked for them. So sticky notes, journals, Remarkables, Full Focus planners, whatever it is, you have to find one place to mind dump all of these things, one common place to put everything and then you, secondly, you have to return to it.
Using just this tool only, right? So this one place, you may have a place for work stuff, you may have a place for personal stuff, a place for family stuff, a place for side hustle stuff. You need to kind of bring all of those things into one place so that when you're dumping the idea, you're dumping the thought down, you're dumping the thing that you know you need to do later. It can all live in one place so that when you go to review it, because that's the part of remembering it, right? When you go to review it, you don't need to spend mental energy trying to figure out now where did I write that down at? Right? How many times have we said that? Now, where did I write that down? Now, where did I put my keys? Right? It's because we didn't put them in a common place. If you put it in a common place then when you return to it you can know exactly where it's at and you can get to the business of remembering what it was that you want to do.
Your common place is no good if you don't return to it regularly. That's why it's called a common place right. We've had areas like when I was in college there was a place called the Commons right. It was the area that everybody knew if you wanted to go hang out that's where you went. There's a common place for things in your life, right? There's a common place that you park your car at your house. There's a common place where you sleep at night. So why not have a common place for you to put down all of your thoughts and all your ideas, return to that place at least once a week, if not at the end of every day, review what you have there. And then from there, you can put it into your processes and systems that we've talked about before, or that you have that work for you and go from there.
Now, this may be a brand new kind of concept or habit for you. Or maybe you heard about it before and you've tried it for a couple of days and it didn't work. Let me just tell you, research shows for the most part, habits take anywhere from 60 to 120 days to really take hold. That means doing that one thing every single day for at least two to four months. So if we meet in the middle, we're going to say 90 days. You need to practice this daily seven days a week for 90 days. Put yourself a little hash mark somewhere so that you can remember yesterday I did it yesterday I did it. You do that every day for 90 days if you consistently use this commonplace and return to it each day for 90 days I can 100% guarantee that you'll have increased creativity, increased productivity and increased mental capacity and energy in every area of your life.
Now what I would also encourage because you're bringing all these things into one place, let's not just throw it in a big pile like someone who's really bad at keeping receipts and just go, okay, somewhere in here is the receipt for that one thing that I bought for my business and somewhere in here is that one receipt that I bought for that thing that I need to return to Lowe's. You're going to want to categorize this list a little bit.
So what I'm currently back to using, what's worked for me, I keep coming back to it every time because it works for me more than anything else. The one thing that I have with me all the time no matter where I'm at is my phone. Unfortunately it is what it is. It may not be the greatest habit in the world but I always have my phone with me. Right now it's right here. You can't see it on the screen if you're watching but I have my phone right here and so if I have an idea in the middle of this you won't know it because you'll see the edited version afterwards but I'm going to pause it. I'm going to open up my notes app where I have pinned to the top of it a commonplace kind of mental note right there and I'm going to go to the category of whatever the idea is if it has to do with business I'm going to go to my business category and just add it as a bullet a bulleted item and I'm going to go from there.
Now I use in that like a checklist situation so that as I'm dumping things in there it's creating new checklist items for me. Then when I review it at the end of the week or at the end of the day, usually for me, I review it every Sunday night when I'm doing my Full Focus planner weekly preview. And when I review it, then I have an opportunity then to add those things that I need to add. Say this is something that needs to happen this week, like the upcoming, as I'm planning out my week, then I'll go ahead and move it to my Full Focus planner, make sure it gets done. And then as I moved it to the planner, I'll check it off of that commonplace list so that I know, okay, it's in a safe place now. It's in a better place. It's in my Full Focus planner. It's going to get done now. And now I've taken the idea from who knows where I've put it in my commonplace, right? Then I reviewed in a categorized commonplace and then I reviewed it at the end of the week. And then I put that item into my Full Focus planner, which I know for me and my disciplines, if it goes into my Full Focus planner, it will get done. If it doesn't, it won't.
So that's my kind of ebb and flow. So categorize it. You may have a family section. You may have a relationship section, a personal section. You may have a business section. You may have a section of habits that you want to form one day. Go ahead and jot it down. You may have like, hey, you know what? I need to call my guy at Edward Jones and see how my 401K is doing. Just jot it down. Hey, this week I said, hey, I need to open up this account at this place. So I'm going to go ahead and jot that down. I put it in my commonplace. It made its way to my Full Focus. And yesterday, I got it done.
So there's a process here of taking the idea, putting it in the place, the one place that you're going to review constantly and go from there. So what do you need to do next? Here's what you need to do. You need to find this one place or this one tool that works best for you. For me, it's iPhone app. Like I said, it could be sticky notes, could be a journal, could be a Remarkable, could be a tablet, could be anything, any sort of device that gets you to write it down, whether it be digitally or physically, just get the thing captured, just get it down. And then you're going to return to it daily or weekly. Weekly at the most. Don't go more than seven days without returning to this list because if you do, you'll lose it as a habit. Your mind will forget, oh no, that's the place we go to dump ideas at. That's the place that we go to kind of drop this in. If you don't do it at least every seven days, you're going to forget it.
So find yourself the one tool, go to it at least every week as you're planning out your week. I promise you, you'll have way more mental energy clarity. So if you would like help with this, I would love to hop on a call with you, a free 30 minute session with me. You go to dustinpead.com, click on the let's chat button, hop on my calendar, and I would be happy to walk through this and how it could work for you personally.
I cannot wait to talk to you next week on another episode of Creativity Made Easy. We'll see you then.