Parker's Ponderings: Notebook Philosophy

How to Keep a Nature Log Notebook

Parker Settecase — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 22:13:30 GMT

Keeping a nature Log notebook is a high-leverage task. Now I would still keep one even if that weren’t the case—efficiency has never been an idol of mine—but it just so happens that this notebook method is very easy to use and offers disproportionately large benefits given the little amount of time and energy used to keep them.

The act of keep a nature log will make you more perceptive, better attuned to the environment you’re living in or traveling to, will help you appreciate the beauty and design inherent in the flora and fauna around you, could help you gain a whole ton of self-knowledge, and could even help you bond more closely with a loved one you choose to explore with.

What is a nature log notebook and how show we keep them?

Simply put, a nature log is a notebook wherein you log the nature you’ve seen. You log the fauna you’ve seen—bull frogs, painted turtles, fish, mice, crayfish, hawks, salamanders, praying mantids, eagles, crows, grasshoppers, snapping turtles, garter snakes, stag beetles, etc.—as well as the flora you you’ve come across and which you find interesting—I don’t know a ton about the plants around me, but maybe you track mushrooms like morels, or you want to track the different kinds of wild flowers as they bloom in Spring, it’s all gold!

So, that’s the basic idea, go out into nature and explore, then log what you’ve seen and how it made you feel, draw a picture, do some basic research, and create your own field guide. Bring a friend or family member along with you and compare notes. It’s a great and easy way to bond without spending a ton of money. I took my daughter out this morning for a couple hours to go look for some animals to add to my log and we had a truly wonderful time talking about nature and sharing hushed whispers about whether or not that stick is actually a turtle head or not. We ended up seeing some massive common snapping turtles and I think I successfully transferred my love of them to her.

she always needs a travel snack. Here she’s showing off some fruit leather.

A little upfront cost for a notebook and maybe a cover for it, and then some pencils, colored pencils and/or pens and you’re set. This morning didn’t cost me anything and it was way more fun that other things we could have spent money on. Now my daughter knows how to identify snowy egrets and great blue herons and how to spot green frogs and what a tick looks like (there were 4 or 5 ticks on the forest preserve toilet! It was horrific).

So, nature log notebooks are pretty simple but there are different ways that you can decide to keep them. Maybe you’d like a little more guidance on how to keep your own. In the rest of this post I’ll walk you through 7 steps for how to start one from scratch and share how I keep mine. Along the way I’ll also give you some tips to help you think through the best way for you to keep your own. I’ll also share some tips on how you can use nature logs to bond with loved ones.

These kinds of notebook philosophy posts/tutorials are for my paid subscribers. So, if you want a detailed guide on how to keep your own nature log notebook—including pictures from my own—then make sure to upgrade to a paid subscription and find it all below the pay wall:

How I Take Book Notes In My Notebooks: A Video Tutorial

Parker Settecase — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:43:46 GMT

I use a lot of different notebook types, brands, and methods for my intellectual work and for my own personal and spiritual development. Many of my subscribers know this and are here solely for that kind of content. I want to continue giving you folks what you’re looking for.

I am going to be writing a lot more philosophy essays and science fiction and fantasy deep-dive type stuff here as I continue my book club, enter into my philosophy PhD program, and continue writing SFF short stories and as I finish up my novel. But I haven’t forgotten my noteheads!

So below you will find the first of many video tutorials on how I use my various notebooks. I think these videos will be a beneficial supplement to what I’ve written. These videos are way less edited than my ParkNotes videos and they allow me to go much deeper. YouTube is a tricky game and it takes me a very, very long time to edit those videos and try to find the best presentation for the widest audience. In these tutorial videos, however, I can go into much more detail and actually teach how I use these without worrying about retention rate and all of that. I don’t care how many views these get, I just want to help you catch the vision and see if the notebook method in view is a good one for you to try.

If you like my notebook stuff, you’re going to love this new series of tutorials. They will definitely complement my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher.

These videos, and my notebook philosophy posts, and my philosophical book club companion essays, and a whole lot more, are for my paid subscribers. Thank you for helping me support my family with independent scholarship!

If you want to get access, upgrade to a paid subscription today and thanks for all the support!

The Craziest Commonplace Book Ever

Parker Settecase — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 16:07:18 GMT

I love looking at other people’s notebooks. It’s fascinating to see how other people use them and to get an insight into how people are thinking on paper. It’s especially interesting to get a peak into the minds of famous fiction authors, philosophers, and other thinkers who use/used notebooks to do their thinking and imaginative work.

But while fascinating in its own right, learning how others use notebooks has often inspired me to take up a new notebook method myself—perhaps too often, in fact. But don’t let my notebook proliferation disorder keep you from exploring new notebooks for yourself. If you have completely bonkers ideas, then keeping something like H.P. Lovecraft’s “Commonplace Book” (it’s not actually a CPB but more on that below) could be the notebook method for you!

You can grab it through the button below to support my work:

Lovecraft's Commonplace Book

The rest of this post on the nature of Lovecraft’s notebook is for paid subscribers. A huge thank you to all of you supporting my independent scholarship through paid subscriptions. If you like my work and want to go deeper, definitely upgrade to a paid sub and come join us behind the curtain for more notebook deep dives, philosophy book club posts, subscriber chats, and many more exclusive posts.

All the Best Ways to Use a Notebook

Parker Settecase — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:06:21 GMT

I love notebooks. I’m a big proponent of their use—some would say too big of a proponent, and that very well may be, I’m kind of obsessed. But I’ve found something as simple as a little pocket notebook can drastically change your life for the better. I started talking about this fact more and more and I accidentally grew into the notebook Czar of YouTube. I never meant for that but I’m learning to own it.

Right now I’m finishing my manuscript for my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher. It’s a philosophy book for notebook heads and a notebook book for philosophy nerds. But if you’re neither of those, it’s still for you! I help you, the reader, explore different notebook methods to help you find the best one for you, while learning about philosophers, their ideas, and their methods of thinking on paper.

I can’t wait for you to see the book, it’s really coming along nicely!

But as I’m putting the finishing touches on the manuscript, I remembered the 5-part Ultimate Guide to Notebooks series I did on charting the logical space of notebook methods here on Substack. I actually really like this guide and now I’m thinking of editing it for the book format and turning it into an appendix in JLAP as a helpful reference guide. But as I was thinking this through I further remembered that I wanted to drop all of the Ultimate Guide links in one post to help my paid subscribers find them all and navigate from one to another more easily.

So, that’s what I’ll do here.

Throughout this series I catalog 30+ notebook methods across my three main categories: thoughts, experience, and self-mastery. There are some methods that overlap between categories and one of those categories needs to be broken down further: thoughts into personal-thoughts and thoughts-of-others. I’ll explain it all in the posts below and I’ll explain why and how some of the methods overlap.

These posts, and all of my other Notebook Philosophy posts, are for my paid subscribers—a big, giant THANK YOU to all of you who have helped me support my family though independent scholarship. So, with that said, if you want to access the 5-part Ultimate Guide to Notebook Methods then make sure to upgrade to a paid subscription and enjoy all the other perks (access to Book Club companion essays, live Zoom Book Club calls, intro to philosophy posts, paid subscriber chat, and more!).

Here are the Links to all 5 parts of the Ultimate Guide to Notebook Methods:

Part 1 HERE
Part 2 HERE
Part 3 HERE
Part 4 HERE
Part 5 HERE

And below you can find the video that started it all! I made an outline charting the logical space of notebook methods for this video and then that outline turned into my Journal Like A Philosopher pitch which was bought by Baker Books. I’ve since made some changes to the outline and ideas in the video—which is why the posts above are even better. And the appendix to JLAP will be the very best—so be looking for the book when it comes out. But for now you can enjoy the video below and the posts above:

How I'm Using Notebooks to Write My SF Novel

Parker Settecase — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 01:45:45 GMT

This post is too long to read in email, sorry about that, I included a lot of pictures. Just follow the prompts and it should take you to the website or app version.

I’m an accidental notebook czar. It’s still not totally clear to me how I got here, but I’ve been using notebooks to aid the life of my mind for at least 15 years. Throughout that time I’ve reinvented some classic notebook methods, only to discover later that others have been using the method for way longer and to greater avail than I have—like the commonplace book.

But I’ve also developed some methods which are probably more idiosyncratic to me, like the book of soliliquies, where you write dialogues with and to yourself in order to get clear on what you think, feel, know—and why. I based that method on St. Augustine’s neologism, “the soliloquy”, and the method he employed in his book, Soliloquies.

That reminds me! We just so happen to be reading St. Augustine’s Soliloquies first in my 2026 Book Club here on Parker’s Ponderings! Come join us! I’m writing companion essays for each section of each book that we read in order to help you get the most out of the philosophy therein. My first companion essay drops on January 9th. Check out our reading list and schedule for the first two books of 2026 here:

And you can watch my ParkNotes YouTube video where I briefly comment on the books in our reading list here:

But back to the to notebooks. I’ve become something of an expert on ways to use notebooks, both from my own thinking and notebook mania, and from that of my ParkNotes audience and many of you here on Parker’s Ponderings, who continue to give me great ideas.

I used to begrudge the notebook czar title because I just wanted to teach people philosophy but I’ve come to embrace it because apparently my notebook stuff has been a big help to many. I never would have thought, but I definitely don’t want to begrudge that!

So, I’m embracing my accidental notebook expert side and writing up tutorials on how I us notebook to study, think, read, and write more deeply. You can find all of the notebook tutorials HERE in this section of my publication.

I am not an expert novelist. However, I am writing a science fantasy novel right now and I wouldn’t be able to keep it all straight with out my convoluted notebook system. The novel is called Block World and has nothing to do with LEGO, nor Roblox, nor Minecraft and everything to do with it’s protagonist Frederic Block, Lady Philosophy, philosopher-kings, and a Galactic Empire. The name was an homage to Frank Herbert’s original title for the serialization of Dune in Analog Magazine called Dune World, plus some other stuff, but I’m pretty sure I’m changing the name to Protrepsis: Mind over Machine or Protrepsis: The Rise of The Philosopher-King.

The story has been a joy to write so far, but it’s taken me about a year and a half longer to get going than I wanted, and most of that is because I had to think through the plot and the world in my notebooks beforehand. I know that’s not how a lot of people do things but I’m trying to write a protreptic divine dialogue science fantasy trilogy and I had to get clear on the philosophical ideas, the plot, FTL, and the intricacies of the rest of the world. I’m a research junkie. Let me be.

You can read chapters 1-3 of Block World on my other Substack publication, Sages, Mages, and Wisdom Machines, HERE. I’m a little over halfway through writing chapter 4 now and that should be out very soon.

So, on the off chance my three-part notebook method can help anyone one of you, I’ll share it here. I know others just like exploring notebook ideas because they find it fascinating or because it inspires them to retool their own. Whatever the case, I’ve learned someone will enjoy this kind of post, so I’m writing them for you. Also, I will share a ton of pictures from my notebooks because I know you guys like looking at the chaos there too.

I’m not claiming originality here, I haven’t look a ton at how novelists use notebooks yet, maybe they all do this, or maybe none of them do (I do know that at least Ursula K. Le Guin didn’t do it this way from her description in Language of the Night).

So, here’s how I’ve been using 3 notebooks to write my science fantasy novel:

notebook 1: rough idea compendium
notebook 2: work book
notebook 3: lore book

Behind the paywall I’ll explain those three, how I use them, and show a butt-ton of pictures from my notebooks.

How To Efficiently Learn the Most from What You Read

Parker Settecase — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 22:47:02 GMT

I’ve painted myself into a reading corner with all of my projects and commitments. I host a podcast where I discuss books and journal articles with professors of philosophy and theology; I write science fiction and philosophy essays for my science fiction magazine; I started publishing a printed commonplace book of wise sayings in another magazine; I host read-alongs of philosophy books and philosophical fiction here on Substack where I write companion essays to help my audience get the most out of the readings; I’m under contract for a philosophy book and I’m working on a pitch for another; I lead several Bible studies; and I regularly preach at my church.

It’s all really great and rewarding stuff but having all these reading-heavy endeavors means I have to read relatively efficiently and I need to remember what I read enough to speak about it publicly, lead a discussion on it in a small group, or write an essay or chapter about it.

Thankfully, I’ve sort of backed into a really helpful three-part method for reading efficiently and for taking really good notes and I’m going to share it with my paid subscribers here below. This method has really helped me and I think it will help you as well, you may think it’s a lot of work and thus not as efficient as I’ve let on but putting more work in on the front end will help you remember and come back to the most important parts of the book later on, which will save you so much time in the long run.

So, if you like tutorials on the life of the mind, please do upgrade to a paid subscription and help support this and my other work. You’ll get access to the paid subscriber chat where I share exclusive updates and the Zoom links to out book club calls, access to all of my notebook philosophy posts which are early drafts of the chapters of my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher, access to exclusive courses and other philosophy content as well.

I’m going to give you step 1 but 2 and 3 are just for the paid subscribers since they help me feed my family. I include pictures from my own books and notebooks for steps 2&3 as well, for all the noteheads out there!

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Step 1 - First Reading & Marginal Notes

So, like I said above, the method I use has 3 parts or steps.

Step one is to read the material through, all the way through, one time and to annotate the text with marginal notes while you do so.

If I have a rarer copy of the book and I don’t want to write in it, I’ll usually just buy a second copy that’s mass produced which I feel comfortable writing in. I know this doesn’t sound efficient, I’m buying multiple copies of the same book, but I’ve tried the reading without marginal notes thing and it’s really awful to try and go back to find a quotation or an argument and have no clue where to find it—it takes forever!

So buy a copy you can write in.

Alternatively, you may consider taking a picture of the page you want to annotate and then mark up the page digitally on your device. I’ve done this on occasion, it’s okay, still better than merely taking a picture or a screen shot and hoping I’ll be able to learn from the unmarked page later on. But if you’re reading a non-fiction piece that you really want to learn from, you’ll end up taking a picture of each page and then having to go back later and re-read the whole chapter or section or paper all over again as you make the annotations you wish you would have in the first reading.

So really, it’s easier to just have a book you can write in or to read the material on a tablet that allows you write on the text with a stylus and to make marginal notes and annotations right there in the text itself your first time through.

What kinds of things should you write in the margins? Well, the purpose of marginalia are to catch your eye and direct it to the most important words, phrases, arguments, etc., on the page—those things which are most important for YOU to remember and reflect back on.

I’m usually reading with an eye towards writing about what I’ve read. I also collect wise sayings—sententiae—from what I read so I will underline and highlight a wise saying in the text and write “sententiae” in the margins next to it so I can scan back through the book or paper and abstract out all the wise sayings for my commonplace books afterward.

I also underline or highlight (sometimes both) key arguments or positions of the author and then will summarize the points in the margins and draw an arrow from my note to the argument on the page. This saves me a ton of time when I’m going back through looking for that argument or point.

I also drop “??” in the margins where I just don’t understand when the author is saying or where I think I must be misinterpreting them. This allows me to think deeply about the passage but not get stuck. I can move on after trying to figure it out and failing by giving myself a “??” I owe you. This reminds me to come back and think more on that section.

Sometimes I just highlight and entire section of the book and label its contents in the margins, something like “On AI” with an arrow. Those sorts of notes are really simple but they will help you in your second reading immensely. They’re sort of like the upside-down exclamation point in Spanish ‘¿’, it signals to you before you start reading the sentence that it’s a question, if you’re reading out-loud, it signals you to start the questioning inflection earlier than we do in english—right at the very end up the sentence when we see the question mark. That’s how marginal notes help you on your second time reading through a text. You are helping yourself read the text better through the notes and annotations you’ve made in your first reading. So do it!

I write a bit more about marginal notes in this post here:

But you’re going to need to come up with your own marginal symbols and protocol for what to hight light, what to underline, what things need to be remembered, how to mark an argument or a wise saying, etc. You’ll also form different habits for non-fiction texts than you do for fiction. I make very few notes in my fiction books. I still mark out the sententiae. And if I’m writing companion pieces for you guys here on Substack, then I’ll take more marginal notes than I would have other wise, but they still don’t compare to the volume I take in a non-fiction text where I’m trying to follow an argument and note my initial thoughts.

Here are the symbols I’ve been recommended, I like them for the most part but I don’t force myself to use them all in everything I read, I just use the ones that come most naturally to me and I adapt them when needed.

How to Journal Like Descartes

Parker Settecase — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 04:57:57 GMT

René Descartes is one of the most important figures in the whole of Western thought—especially Western philosophy. I love Descartes. Many hate Descartes. So we’re going to read Descartes’s A Discourse on the Method (Of Correctly Conduction One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Science) in our next Parker’s Ponderings read-along.

It’s a very short book (with a very long full title) so we’re going to buzz through it in just three weeks. But, while it is short, Descartes does take us super deep—yet he does so without overly technical jargon—it’s a great read, really!

I’m going to write at least 3 companion essays to the Discourse to help you get the most out of the reading. I’ll be using the Oxford World’s Classics edition but if you have a different one then feel free to use what you have. If you want to pick up the same edition as me, use my affiliate link to further support my work: Amazon Affiliate Link to A Discourse on the Method

Here’s the read-along schedule:

Reading/Companion Essay Schedule

Oct 23rd - Essay on Part 1 & 2
Oct 30th - Essay on Part 3 & 4
Nov 6th - Essay on Part 5 & 6
Nov 8th (Saturday) @ 3pm central time - Book Club Zoom Call

The Book Club Zoom calls are just for paid subscribers so make sure to upgrade to a paid subscription in you want in on the live call or access to the recordings of past calls.

As a promotion for this latest read-along, Leuchtturm1917 sent me 10 notebooks to give away. I picked 8 winners from my paid subscribers and 2 winners from the giveaway comment section. I’ve messaged all the for addresses and will get those in the mail next week. Thanks for the support!

Why’d I pick a notebook giveaway to promote the Descartes read-along? Well, because Descartes used a notebook to do his philosophical and mathematical work and to take his scientific notes as well as analyze three of his most important dreams. So, it seems fitting that we use a notebook to take our notes on Descartes work.

So, congrats to the notebooks winners and if you’re reading this, please come join us for the read along. All the companion essays are free for everyone, but again those zoom calls are just for paid subscribers.

Now, I want to say a bit about how Descartes kept his notebook, his Pensées or Cogitationes Privatae—which was probably inspired by Isaac Beeckman’s Journael or Tafelboeckje—and how you can go about journaling like Descartes, but that’ll be for the paid subscribers as well. This article is a first stab at the content for my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher, and I like to give my paid subs a first peek and opportunity to give feedback. I will also include lots of pictures from my own notebook, of the same style that Descartes kept, to help you get a picture of how you can keep one too. So please do upgrade and support my work. I’ll see you on the other side of the pay wall, thanks for all the support!

So, Descartes was a notebook enjoyer. I couldn’t be more pleased! What kind of notebook method did he utilize? Well, The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon calls it a kind of diary, but that’s not quite right—at all. Descartes’s notebook was much more like the

The Best Way to Use a Notebook: The Pocket Catch-All

Parker Settecase — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 19:19:44 GMT

I’m writing the ultimate guide to using a notebook in a series of 5 posts.

You’ve found the 5th post in the series. I didn’t mean for this to be such an in-depth treatment but then again, I didn’t expect to become the accidental notebook czar of YouTube either but here I sit amongst a ridiculous pile of notebooks. It’s dangerous business setting out on an education, you never know where your studies will lead you—in my case, it led to analytic philosophy and then to using the tools I learned in my formal study to “chart the logical space” of all notebook methods.

In part 1, I introduced the series and explained that I’ll be cataloging 30+ notebook methods across my three main categories of thoughts, experience, and self-mastery. Then I covered the first half of the Thoughts category: self-generated thoughts. Read that post here: Part 1 - Collecting Your Thoughts

In part 2 I covered what I call ‘gleaned thoughts’, that is, the thoughts you’ve gleaned from others. So instead of using a notebook to collect or think through your own thoughts, the methods in that post will help you collect, store, and retrieve the thoughts of others. Read the second post here: Part 2 - Collecting Thoughts from Others .

In part 3, I covered notebook methods in the experience category. These notebook methods help you log your experiences and reflect on your emotions. Read that third post here: Part 3 - Logging Your Experience .

In part 4, I covered notebook methods in the self-mastery category. These notebook methods help you manage your time, master your attention, and help you stay on track with your productivity goals. Read the fourth post here: Part 4 - Mastering Yourself.

Here in part 5 I’ll finish with the pocket catch-all notebook which is a blend of all three categories and the most important notebook in my whole collection

You’re going to hit a pay wall here soon. These kinds of posts are my first takes on the content of my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher, so I can’t have them just out there in the wild. But this process of writing them up for paid subscribers has been both motivating and rewarding. It’s really good to get feedback from paid subscribers who are invested in my stuff and I feel good about answering your questions in detail. I’ve already reshaped some stuff for the book based on feedback I’ve got from my paid subs here. So thanks to everyone of you who supports my work and helps me communicate more clearly.

I’ll also drop some of my affiliate links and discounts down at the end of the post so stick around for those or find them in the description of my ParkNotes videos on YouTube.

So let’s jump in with the catch-all notebook method.

The Catch-All Notebook

The catch-all notebook is literally the most important notebook method that I use. I’ve tried to come up with another name for this method but ‘catch-all’ is probably the best name for it because

A Dude's Defense of Diaries

Parker Settecase — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 04:29:22 GMT

I’m kind of a bro. I’m kind of a dorky lore lover and philosophy/theology nerd, but I’m a dude too. In various seasons of my life, I’ve benefited from keeping different kinds of diaries. And I’d love to commend diaries for other dudes. Diaries are for bros too.

Now many of us hear the word “diary” and think of a 13-year-old girl writing “dear diary, today Billy smiled at me he’s so cute” etc. But that’s not all that a diary is. That’s one way to keep them—and if a little girl is using a diary like that to keep track of her experiences and emotions, then good for her! But there are other ways to keep a diary and the bros are missing out if they think that diaries are just for little ladies.

So, in the following post, I’m going to describe what a diary is, go over some of the benefits of keeping one, explain a couple different ways to keep a diary, and then give a couple practical tips on how to get started.

This post is for paid subscribers. If you want to read the full think, upgrade to a paid subscription and gets lots of other perks too! If not, feel free to watch my new ParkNotes video on the same topic here:

What is a diary?

Diaries and journals are often conflated. Many think the two terms are just interchangeable and there’s no need to distinguish the two. I get that. But I’ve been trained as a philosopher and I love distinctions. So, I’m going to make some. But on top of my need for excessive demarcation, I actually do think the practice of keeping a diary and keeping journal are genuinely different practices.

So first let’s get clear on what a journal is.

Journal Like an Absurdist French Philosopher

Parker Settecase — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 03:24:28 GMT

Albert Camus was many things. Most notably, for me, he was a French philosopher, novelist, and an avid notebook user.

Though he once denied that he was a philosopher, he was wrong. He totally was a philosopher and has been correctly received as such.

He’s often associated with the philosophy of ‘existentialism’—which is roughly the idea that ‘existence precedes essence’, that is, we exist first and then through our actions and experiences we form our ‘essence’.

But Camus actively denied being an existentialist as well, and in this denial he was correct. He referred to himself as an ‘absurdist’ rather than an existentialist, arguing that life is absurd, the universe is irrational, so we shouldn’t try to find meaning in a meaningless universe. Trying to rationally pin down the irrational will only lead to conflict—contra the existentialists who claimed that one could create one’s own meaning. Surely, this is an all too simplistic overview, but I want to get on to the notebooks!

In my academic philosophical work, I never gave Camus much thought—he was a ‘continental’ philosopher and I was obsessed with ‘analytic’ philosophy. I wanted to be a walking logical syllogism. I did read Camus’s the Stranger in my academic theological work, and maybe also in my history of philosophy course, but in my brief study of his ideas, he was merely an antagonist to be rebuffed, rather than a serious philosopher to be considered. I was dumb.

Thankfully, a wonderful rare book librarian from Toronto named Andreea sent me 2 of the 3 volumes of Camus’s complete notebook collection (thanks again, Andreea! You are the true embodiment of The Librarian). I’m something of a completest so I quickly scoured the internet until I found volume 1 to complete my collection. Now I have all three volumes which ware comprised of the published editions of Camus’s 9 notebooks—which he simply called his ‘cahiers’, which is just French for ‘notebooks’.

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I love the intersection of philosophy and notebooks so when I found out that Camus brought notebooks around with him and depended on them to think through his philosophical ideas, collect his favorite quotations, and manuscript out his most important novels, I completely changed my mind about him on the spot. I knew I had to find out more and share it with my audience.

I started perusing the 3 volumes mostly to try and pinpoint exactly what kind of notebook method he was utilizing but in the process I’ve come to really love Camus. I still disagree with so much of his thought but I feel like I understand him so much more after reading the quotations that he collected and after pondering on his own aphorisms and dictums and other sententiae. I also think I can pin down the kind of notebook method he used.

So, in the rest of this post I’ll share some of the 3 translators’ introductory notes so you can see what they thought of his notebook methodology and then I’ll give my own analysis—as an official Notebook Czar. I’ll then finish by explaining how you can keep your own notebooks like Camus did and share some of my favorite entries from Camus’s Cahiers.

You’re about to run into a paywall. These kinds of posts serve as a precursors to my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher, so I can’t have them floating around the internet all willy-nilly, but writing them here first really helps me force myself to continue working on the book. So, If you want to read the rest of this post, upgrade to a paid subscription and please do leave me your thoughts so I know how to adjust the content to best serve you, the invested paid subscriber. Your feedback will also bless those who will buy the finished book.

The Best Way to Use a Notebook | The Ultimate Guide pt. 4 of 5: Self-Mastery

Parker Settecase — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 05:18:04 GMT

I’m writing the ultimate guide to using a notebook in a series of 5 posts.

You’ve found the 4th post in the series. I didn’t mean for this to be such an in-depth treatment but then again, I didn’t expect to become the accidental notebook czar of YouTube either but here I sit amongst a ridiculous pile of notebooks. It’s dangerous business setting out on an education, you never know where your studies will lead you—in my case, it led to analytic philosophy and then to using the tools I learned in my formal study to “chart the logical space” of all notebook methods.

In the post you’re reading now, part 4, I’ll cover notebook methods in the self-mastery category.

And then in part 5 I’ll finish with the pocket catch-all notebook which is a blend of all three categories.

So let’s jump in with 7 or 8 more notebook methods, this time from the experience category. This time I share more pictures from my own notebooks as examples for the methods considered.

Self-Mastery

Desiderata

Track Goals (metrics)
Manage different projects
Time management
Productivity
Declutter your mind
Wants/Purchase List

Notebook Methods for Mastering Yourself

Reading Log (example picture below)
- Reading logs are one of my absolute favorite productivity tools. They are super simple to use. Make a daily reading goal. I like to use page numbers as my daily goal. Right now I’m in the midst of lots of different writing projects, so I’m taking a break from page number goals, but usually I try to hit at least 50 pages minimum per day. I had to build up to that from like 5 pages back in 2013 but over time I built up my reading capacity. I also have uses time as a goal before but I don’t like that metric as much—it’s not as beneficial for keeping me on track with what I want to do. I will often set timers to make sure I have uninterrupted time to read—usually 60 to 90 minutes—but if I can get 50 pages read in my first allocated time slot then great. If not, I’ll need more slots.
- So come up with a daily page number goal. How many pages can you actually read every day on a consistent basis? Can you add a couple more pages to stretch yourself? Just one more? Do that. Progressive overload. Build up and add some pages after a few months.
- Once you have your daily page number goal,

What is a Commonplace Book?

Parker Settecase — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:21:54 GMT

In this post, I’m going to provide some definitions of ‘commonplace book’ from academic sources (including from Herman Bavinck!); I’ll show you some examples of published commonplace books like founding father Thomas Jefferson’s, poet W.H. Auden’s, and philosopher George Berkeley; I’ll give my own working definition from my own forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher; and then I’ll give you my most up-to-date categories for picking the best kind of commonplace book for you.

I’m giving you a taste of the article but you’ll end up running into a paywall. These notebook philosophy posts are basically the first drafts of my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher. One of the perks I offer my paid subscribers is getting a first look at the contents of the book and giving paid subscribers an opportunity to provide feedback so that the final form of the book helps them more than it would have otherwise. The final book will be fleshed out much more and include more quotations and in-depth work on various philosophers, but I’ll be working off and adding to these notebook philosophy posts here on Parker’s Ponderings.

Paid subscribers also get access to my digital commonplace book of wise sayings, access to my full catalog of notebook philosophy essays, access to the paid subscriber chat, access to my digital intro to philosophy text book, priority direct message replies, and a whole lot more. So if any or all of that sounds good to you, and you want to help support my work, upgrade to a paid subscription. That would be huge!

What is a Commonplace Book?

I’m prepping for a conversation with on commonplace books this week. It’s going to be awesome! She’s literally a scholar of commonplace books. If you have questions you want me to ask her, drop them in the comments and see her Oxford University Press book, on commonplace books here.

Definitions

My working definition:

A commonplace book is a collection of quotations which may or may not be arranged according to ‘commonplaces’ or common headings, and which is organized according to a particular scope and purpose, for a particular audience.

This is my latest and greatest definition wherein I’m trying to hit on all four differentia which I use to categorize the different kinds of commonplace books:

scope
purpose
places
audience.

The Best Way to Use a Notebook | The Ultimate Guide pt. 3 of 5: Capturing Experiences and Emotions

Parker Settecase — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 19:56:04 GMT

I’m writing the ultimate guide to using a notebook in a series of 5 posts.

You’ve found the 3rd post in the series. I didn’t mean for this to be such an in-depth treatment but then again, I didn’t expect to become the accidental notebook czar of YouTube either but here I sit amongst a ridiculous pile of notebooks. It’s dangerous business setting out on an education, you never know where your studies will lead you—in my case, it led to analytic philosophy and then to using the tools I learned in my formal study to “chart the logical space” of all notebook methods.

In part 1, I introduced the series and explained that I’ll be cataloging 30+ notebook methods across my three main categories of thoughts, experience, and self-mastery. Then I covered the first half of the Thoughts category: self-generated thoughts. Read that post here:

In part 2 I covered what I call ‘gleaned thoughts’, that is, the thoughts you’ve gleaned from others. So instead of using a notebook to collect or think through your own thoughts, the methods in that post will help you collect, store, and retrieve the thoughts of others. Read the second post here:

Now in part 3, this post you’re currently reading, I will cover notebook methods in the experience category.

In part 4, I will cover notebook methods in the self-master category.

And I’ll finish with the pocket catch-all notebook which is a blend of all three categories, in part 5.

So let’s jump in with 7 or 8 more notebook methods, this time from the experience category.

Experience

Notebooks in the ‘experience’ category emphasize daily life, events, experiences, emotions, affections, etc., rather than the more cognitive aspects emphasized in the ‘thoughts’ category. Now, we are rational, volitional, emotional beings—so we’re not going to be able to wholly compartmentalize out our different aspects into different notebooks—and we probably shouldn’t want to do that anyways. With that said, you are going to include

The Best Way to Use a Notebook | The Ultimate Guide pt. 2 of 5: Gleaning Thoughts

Parker Settecase — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 20:14:18 GMT

I’m writing the ultimate guide to using a notebook in a series of 5 posts.

You’ve found the 2nd post in the series. I didn’t mean for this to be such an in-depth treatment but then again, I didn’t expect to become the accidental notebook czar of YouTube but here I sit amongst a ridiculous pile of notebooks. It’s dangerous business setting out on an education, you never know where your studies will lead you—in my case, it led to analytic philosophy and then to using the tools I learned in my formal study to “chart the logical space” of all notebook methods.

You do not need to keep lots and lots of notebooks! This is a guide to help you find which notebook method is best for you. Maybe you’ll end up keeping two or three—that’s cool. I have a weird mind. I am helped by compartmentalizing all of my various projects. Additionally, I make part of my living by exploring the notebook space and systematizing different methods. So I am not actively using each and every method I discuss in this series—yes, I do actively keep more than seems reasonable to most people though. So that’s just a disclaimer. Use the ones that work best for you but don’t load up on notebooks just because.

This series has grown out of an outline I made for one of my ParkNotes YouTube videos where I catalogued all the different ways that you can use a notebook to help yourself live better. That outline blossomed into a book pitch which led to a contract for my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher. So now I’m fleshing out the outline a bit more to include as an appendix for the book and I’m giving my paid subscribers early access to it—though the final catalog will be more detailed and look a bit different as I connect it with the details of each chapter.

If you haven’t read part 1 yet, you should, it’ll set up the series better than I did here:

Okay, so you’ve read part 1 and know that I’m going to catalog 30+ notebook methods across my three main categories: thoughts, experience, and self-mastery.

In part 1 I covered the first half of the Thoughts category: self-generated thoughts.

Here in part 2 I’ll cover what I call ‘gleaned thoughts’, that is, the thoughts you’ve gleaned from others. So instead of using a notebook to collect or think through your own thoughts, the methods in this post will help you collect, store, and retrieve the thoughts of others.

Pt. 3 will cover notebook methods in the experience category. Pt. 4 will cover notebook methods in the self-master category. Then I’ll finish with pt.5 where I’ll cover the pocket catch-all notebook with is a blend of all of them.

So let’s jump in with 10 more notebook methods to help you glean thoughts from other thinkers.

The Best Way to Use a Notebook | The Ultimate Guide pt. 1 of 5

Parker Settecase — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 01:36:27 GMT

I’m sending this out as the second post today! I’m sorry about that. I’m impatient and have a lot of posts I want to write and I have to strike why the ADHD iron is hot. I won’t do this often, I promise.

This post is the first of 5 posts comprising the ultimate guide to using a notebook.

I love notebooks. I’m a big proponent of their use—some would say too big of a proponent, and that very well may be, I’m kind of obsessed.

It all started with a black pocket notebook back when I was in college. That simple Moleskine ended up transforming my life. It’s really a simple thing—just a mini notebook with an elastic band to keep it shut. But with it, I was able to write down all those ideas, thoughts, memories, to-dos, ratiocinations, connections, names, ruminations, syntheses, and quotes that popped into my mind or floated into my awareness which I used to expend so much mental energy trying so hard to hold onto.

Something so simple ended up drastically improving my life.

I used to lay awake in bed for hours—literally!—being plagued by ideas that didn’t want to be erased by my nightly sleep. I actually hated going to sleep lest I lose what I gained throughout the day, or lest my ideas waylay my mind while I’m trying to power down—both of which happened all too often.

But the pocket notebook saved me from all of that and let me finally sleep in peace.

Now I don’t have to worry about forgetting my best ideas or favorite quotes etc., because I know now that they’re tucked safely away in my pocket notebook. Additionally, the actual process of writing them down helps me clarify, solidify, sharpen, and encoded those things much better as well—which helps me recall them better even without the use of my notebook.

Thanks to the success of my pocket notebook habit, I eventually started developing other kinds of notebook habits as my pocket notebooks started to fill in. I needed a notebook for my own ideas—a place to store then and continue to work them out. And I needed a notebook to store all those quotes that tickled my intellect and punched me in the gut. I’d need a spot for transferring and more fully capturing my time-bound emotions and recording various events in my life. And it’d be good to have a place to put my goals and my plans to accomplish them.

So my pocket notebook blossomed into various other kinds of notebooks. I ended up reinventing the wheel on some methods, like the commonplace book and diary, but I also came up with some methods that I haven’t seen anyone else use, which are based on the philosophical methods of some of my favorite philosophers.

It’s pretty cool to work on a commonplace book for a while and then discover it’s a method used throughout western history going back to Roman rhetoricians like Quintilian. It’s also pretty cool to come up with a new approach that others can benefit from too.

Eventually I started sharing my notebook methods with my friends and then my blog readers, and then my YouTube audience. People flocked to my notebook stuff in droves and preferred that kind of content way more than my philosophy content. They reached out to me with their own methods and variations and tips and with their own questions. Through this process, I became the accidental notebook czar of YouTube.

I begrudged the title and the burden at first, but I’ve come to embrace it. I am honored to be your notebook czar and if I can help you live your life better by explaining various ways to keep a notebook, then I will!

In this post I’m going to “chart the logical space” of all notebook methods. Now, that’s probably not strictly true, I bet there are some possible notebook methods that I miss in this catalog, but I’m going to chart all the methods I’ve explored, both through the use of reason—deducing and inducing different methods based on the kinds and categories I’ve come up with—and through my own experience—I have explored lots and lots of different and new notebook methods since starting my notebook & philosophy YouTube channel, ParkNotes.

So, I’m going to catalog 30+ notebook methods across my three main categories: thoughts, experience, and self-mastery. There are some methods that overlap between categories and one of those categories needs to be broken down further: thoughts into personal-thoughts and thoughts-of-others. I’ll explain it all below and I’ll explain why and how some of the methods overlap.

This written post is a fleshed out version of the outline I used for a ParkNotes video I did on this catalog of notebook methods. If you’re interested in watching that ParkNotes video, you can find it below.

The outline eventually bloomed into the outline for my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher. But keep reading because this post is an update and improvement on the outline and the video:

This post is a more detailed catalog which which most likely itself bloom into the introduction to Journal Like a Philosopher.

You’re about to hit a paywall. I keep these posts limited to paid subscribers for a few reasons. I need to fund my other philosophical work and these practical habits posts always generate the most interest. These posts are probably some of my most unique-to-me posts—they’re based on my own habits and life experience. They’re what my paid subscribers are most interested in so I want to say thank you to them for supporting my work. Paid subscribers are the people most likely to buy Journal Like a Philosopher when it comes out so their feedback on these posts are most vital and could end up shaping the final product. And there are a myriad of other reasons as well, but that’s enough apology for now.

If you like my work here or on YouTube, please do consider upgrading to a paid subscription. You’ll get access to this posts and lots of other paid posts and lectures. If you’re a notebook lover, this post will not disappoint you, you have my word as Accidental Notebook Czar. If somehow it does disappoint, you can also leave me a comment as a paid subscriber or message me in the paid subscriber chat and we can talk it out too.

Okay, so let’s jump in with the three initial categories: thoughts, experience, and self-mastery.

Thoughts, Experience, and Self-Mastery

After 12 years of using various notebook methods, I finally saw a pattern emerge. I’d been keeping some notebooks to gather my own thoughts or collect the thoughts of others, some notebooks to capture and process my life experiences and events, and some notebooks to manage my life and help myself stack on track with my goals.

Once I saw this pattern and abstracted out the three categories, the whole world of notebooks opened up and made more sense. I’m not a psychopath after all—no, that’s not true. I’m nuts and you really shouldn’t keep as many notebooks as I do, it’s insane. But this is actually part of my job, so even if it’s crazy, it’s justified.

In the final draft of this catalog, I’ll explain some of the philosophical roots of the trichotomy—yes, it sort of goes back to Plato as do most things—but there would be no Plato without Pythagoras—ah, no, that’s for another time.

For now, I’ll just say there are three broad categories of notebook methods: you can use them for thoughts, be it for your own thoughts—collecting them or actually thinking them through on the page, or both—for collecting and storing the thoughts of others; for capturing and processing events and experiences; and for self-mastery.

I’ll give the desiderata (something that is needed or wanted) of each category and then characterize each individual method after that.

Let’s start with Thoughts and specifically, with your thoughts, or self-generated thoughts.

How to Journal Like St. Augustine (Soliloquy Notebook)

Parker Settecase — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:08:15 GMT

“I question myself and I respond to myself, as if reason and I were two, although I was alone.” - Augustine, Revisions I.4.1

St. Augustine is a giant figure in Western philosophy and theology. His ideas and his influence are ubiquitous and it would take this entire post (and then some) to list just where I’ve noticed his influence in Western thought—and I haven’t even been looking that hard.

So, I’m not going to try and give an intro to Augustine here. I am starting a digital introduction to philosophy project here on Parker’s Ponderings, and I will definitely do a few entries on Augustine there. But here in this post, I’ll just say Augustine is perhaps the most prominent Christian philosopher in the history of the Church, and one of the most influence philosophers in all of Western history.

While his influence and many of his ideas are still widely discussed and studied today, it’s actually one of his least known ideas that I want to cover in this post, because it’s eminently practical and beneficial for self-knowledge, and thus should be way more widely known and utilized. The idea is the philosophical soliloquy.

Socrates is attributed with saying that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Now, I’m not sure 1. how true that is, 2. whether or not he even said that, and 3. what direct implications that statement has for the ‘examined life’—even if the unexamined life is not worth living, that doesn’t say whether or not the examined life is any more worth living. But in my case, journaling about my ideas and keeping a diary to occasionally write down what I’m feeling and experiencing have both been beneficial for me and I actually do think my life has felt more “worth living” since I’ve begun examining it and the soliloquy is one of the tools that helps me do that well.

The soliloquy is something of a blend between a journal entry (ideas) and a diary (experience and emotions).

If you’re curious about my distinction between a ‘journal’ and a ‘diary’ make sure to subscribe because I’m working on a post about that distinction as well.

So in this post, I’m going to briefly lay out Augustine’s method of philosophical soliloquy and then I’ll explain how I use it as a journaling habit to help me gain self-knowledge, think through my own thoughts discursively, and gain some solace, comfort, and cognitive rest. Then I’ll show you a couple ways you can keep your own soliloquies for self-knowledge. I like to write and keep mine in a physical notebook but if you like some digital analog better, you can easily do that as well.

You’re about to run into a paywall. These kinds of posts are my first stabs at ideas for my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher. I’m working out the ideas here on Substack for my paid subscribers to benefit from and to them a chance to give me feedback so I can make sure to give them more of what they want in the final draft.

If you want to join along and get access to these and all the rest of my Notebook Philosophy posts, as well as a whole ton of other exclusive posts and access to the paid subscriber chat where you can ask me your questions directly, then upgrade to a paid subscription and come join us. It helps support my work and it will benefit you as well—a win-win.

Augustine’s Invention of the Soliloquy

In the fall of 386 AD, ST. Augustine took a vacation with some friends, a couple students, his son, and his mother Monica, to Cassiciacum in Northern Italy to recover from an illness and do some deep thinking. There, Augustine produced what’s come to be known as “the Cassiciacum Dialogues” which include Against the Academics, On the Happy Life, On Order, and The Soliloquies. In the introduction to the Yale University Press edition of Soliloquies, translator/annotator/commentator, Michael Foley, argues that Augustine’s dialogues are closer to Cicero’s than Plato’s:

Remember What You Read | 5 Ways to Keep a Notebook of Book Notes

Parker Settecase — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 20:07:37 GMT

This post is too long for email. Sorry about that. It’s jammed too full of good tips, resources, and pictures of my own marginal notes and notebooks. So, just follow the prompts to the website in order to read the full post with all of the reading tips. Now on to the post:

I love reading. I love finding illuminating quotes for my various commonplace books. I love finding pertinent information for my compendiums. I love generating my own ideas about what I’ve read for my book reviews. I love finding new words to increase my own vocabulary with. And I love discussing what I’ve read with others.

I absolutely hate losing a quote. It’s so frustrating to read something wonderful and then not be able to find the source of the exact quote, especially when it’d be the perfect ornament for a Substack piece I’m writing! I hate reading something profound or finding something especially poignant only to forget where I found it and not be able to reference it for further study. And more than anything, I hate when I forget the unique insights and connections I made while reading.

These loves and hates lead me to start keeping notebooks for my book notes.

In this post I’ll cover five different ways you can keep a notebook for your own book notes, which can help you motivate yourself to continue reading through that book you started—or have been meaning to start; can help you remember your favorite quotes from the book; can help you remember the structure of the arguments or plot of the book; and can help you both generate your own ideas about the books you read and remember them later on.

You’re about to hit a paywall on this post. These kinds of notebook posts and ‘life of the mind’ tutorials support the other work which I put out for free, like my philosophy essays, read-along companion essays, science fiction and fantasy short stories. They’re also part of my research and preliminary work on my forthcoming book, Journal Like a Philosopher. So, if you like what I do here or on YouTube, and want to support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack and I’ll also help you develop your own study habits to support your own intellectual journey.

Past the paywall, you’ll find five detailed accounts on how you could use a notebook to help yourself get the most out of what you read. You can apply the info and instructions to a ‘digital’ notebook as well, but I’m an accidental notebook czar and I’m always going to push paper on you.

I also cover the benefits of writing marginal notes and annotations in your books and I give you some of the symbols I use in my own books and some other that have been recommended to me as well. I’m trying to jam as much value into this piece as humanly possible for you guys, so it’s a big one.

Let’s jump in.

Five ways to keep a Notebook for Book Notes

I was recently at a C.S. Lewis Institute talk given by Dr. James Beitler

How to Keep a Compendium Notebook

Parker Settecase — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 20:57:50 GMT

My philosophy of time compendium is a replica of the TVA Handbook from the show Loki. It’s perfect.

I'm talking about compendia! Make yourself atleast one paper notebook compendium on a given interest. These are the best tools to help you get acquainted with new topics and master those topics you want to be an expert in. I'll explain why, I'll characterize 4 different kinds of compendia you could keep, and then I’ll show you how to start one from scratch.

What is a Compendium?

I am an accidental notebook czar. It just kind of happened. I use lots and lots of different notebook methods to help me sharpen my mind and remember what I’ve read and what I think. If you’re familiar with my YouTube channel, ParkNotes, then you may know me as a commonplace book guy. I really love a good commonplace book. I’ve been using them for over 10 years to help with my own philosophy and theology academic journal articles, to help me writing my research papers across my 3 Master’s programs, to help with blog posts, with preaching, and even with social media posts. Commonplace books are awesome. I’ve come up with 8 different ways to keep a commonplace book and if you’re interested in those, you can check them out here in this post:

If you don’t keep a commonplace book, you should start today.

But while I used to think CPBs were the end-all-be-all for intellectual mastery, I think I may have changed my mind. They may have been supplanted by compendiums.

What’s the difference?

Here’s a ParkNotes video I recently put out on compendiums which you might enjoy but for my readers, I’ll continue on with my written definitions below:

A commonplace book is a collection of quotations, usually organized according to a particular scope and for a particular purpose, often according to ‘commonplaces’ or common headings.

That’s my working definition thus far, I may tighten it up even more or add to it before I settle on the final definition for my book, Journal Like a Philosopher—but it’s good enough for now.

A compendium, on the other hand, is a collection of information and analysis about a body of knowledge, usually meant to be comprehensive in scope and systematically presented.

[you’re about to run into a paywall. This content is part of the research for the book I’m writing for Baker Books, it’s something of a first stab at my chapter on compendiums. Below the paywall you’ll find some psychology studies on analog study methods vs. digital methods and then some brand new criteria for determining which kind of compendium is best for you and how to go about making one from scratch. If that sounds beneficial for you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to check it out before my book, Journal Like a Philosopher comes out (in 2026 or 2027?)]

So, the major difference between a compendium and a commonplace book is

An Aphorism A Day for All of May!

Parker Settecase — Fri, 02 May 2025 19:41:59 GMT

I’m behind on my companion essay for chapters 13 & 14 of our read-along of C.S. Lewis’s Miracles. I’m sorry about that! Things have been crazy this week, lots of YouTube videos due; I’m teaching a course on systematic theology at my church and Sunday is the first class so I’ve been prepping that; and I dislocated my left pointer finger at wrestling practice on Tuesday which set me back a little bit too. So, I’m pushing back the essay to next Wednesday and pushing back next week’s companion essay to the Wednesday after that. Sorry about that, but hopefully that will give the folks who’ve fallen behind some time to catch back up with us.

Our next book club Zoom call is happening this Sunday, the 4^th, at 7pm central! So upgrade to a paid subscriber if you want in on that. I’ll send the link in the paid subscriber convo beforehand.

In the meantime, let me tell you about a fun new project I’m doing. I’ve written on aphorisms before here on Substack and I’ve made some videos on them over on my YouTube channel, ParkNotes. A couple people have suggested that I do something like an aphorism a day on Twitter or Instagram stories or something. I don’t get much traction on other platforms and I pretty much hate Twitter, so I never gave it much thought. But then randomly last night it hit me that doing an aphorism a day on Substack notes would be perfect. Substack folks like to read stuff! And I get decent interactions here as well, so maybe I can get some good feedback to help me craft better aphorisms. And it just so happened to be the first of the month when I had this epiphany—too perfect not to jump on it.

But more important to me than engagement or constructive feedback is developing the habit of daily writing and thinking in an aphoristic way. I have this dream of becoming an old wizened sage and I think one of the best ways to help myself achieve this goal is to learn how to wrap my advice, opinions, and thoughts in a pithy aphorism. So here’s hoping that writing at least one aphorism a day for the month of May will help me establish the habit and get better at rattling them off at will. I’ve been keeping a journal of aphorisms for a while now but this will help me fill it up on a more regular basis. When it’s done, it may also be a cool artifact for my daughter to thumb through after I’m gone.

So you can find my aphorisms from each day over on my notes feed right here on Substack during the month of May, 2025.

You may be asking “what is an aphorism?”

An aphorism is a form of sententiae or wise saying. R.J. Hollingsdale analyzes aphorisms along 4 qualities in his introduction to Georg Lichtenberg’s collection of aphorisms called The Waste Books. He says that aphorisms are distinguished by the following four qualities:

Aphorisms are brief, isolated, witty, and philosophical. Being philosophical sets them apart from sententiae like epigrams which are basically witty observations. Being witty sets aphorisms apart from sententiae like proverbs and maxims, which are meant to be more straight forward truths.

I’m writing a chapter on sententiae for my book, Journal Like a Philosopher, and of all the sententiae I’ve been researching, aphorisms are the best. Proverbs are a close second, followed by dictums, then epigrams, then maxims, axioms, and then platitudes. I’ll write more on each of these and a bit more on aphorisms and the research comes along, but for now I’ll leave it here and try to give you 31 examples of the best form of sententiae this month over on my notes. Feel free to come join me on the adventure and just catch up by adding 3 to your notes today, or 4 if you’re reading this tomorrow, etc. etc.

How I Use Notebooks for Creative Writing

Parker Settecase — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 20:40:56 GMT

I just posted a new ParkNotes video on my method for using catch-all pocket notebooks and designated science fiction and fantasy notebooks for generating new short story ideas, for working on those ideas, and for working on longer term projects like my science fantasy novel and novelletes. Right now I’m working on a novel, a novellete, and a compendium for my Imperium from the novel. Lots of fun stuff coming here on my subsection, Sages, Mages, and Wisdom Machines!

I am planning on writing up the content from this latest ParkNotes video into its own post here on Substack for my paid subscribers, but in the mean time enjoy the content presented in ParkNotes form: