Commonplace Books Earned Me 3 Master's Degrees

And Now They Pay My Mortgage

Commonplace books are having a moment—or at least the were in 2022 & 2023. I don’t totally understand why CPBs had such a boom on YouTube during those two years, but I definitely capitalized on the tail end of it. By August 2023, I’d been keeping commonplace books for ten or so years, first on accident and out of necessity, and then later self-consciously. It was pretty insane to see something that had been so integral to my own intellectual development as a viral topic on YouTube. I made a new YouTube channel, posted some videos, two of which were on my methods for keeping commonplace books, and the second of the two exploded, transforming my YouTube hobby into a YouTube career (even if an unstable and terrifying one!).

Check out my latest ParkNotes video on how I actually use my commonplace books today:

Now at its most fundamental level, a commonplace book is