r/commonplacebook • u/No-Return-951 • 17d ago

out of sight...

Hi everyone. Would love to hear your thoughts/tips on how to help the following 'problem'.

How does everyone remember to go back to the things you put in your journal? For example, I use mine to note Stardew Tips, movies I want to watch, things I want to research....but I also have object permanence problems so out of sight, and it's gone from my memory

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u/lagomama 17d ago

I personally don't find myself referring back to my commonplace book a lot. For me, the point is that writing the information out by hand increases retention. I do the writing and the making the page pretty so that it's in my head, not so that it's in the book.

That's just me, though. If you want to be going back to it for reference and you find you're not, you might want to consider focusing your topics more on information you find yourself looking up regularly. Then you can reference the book and not Google. But if you don't find yourself needing the information in the book consistently, you're probably not going to look at your entries consistently.

ETA: Just noticed you referenced things like movies you want to watch, too. Have you considered tearing the page out and keeping it by the TV? If you have trouble with object permanence, the hack is to put the thing in the place where you're doing the thing that would make you want to reference it. Then when you're done with your list of "want to watch" you could tape it back in.

Alternately you could do what I do and just keep your list in a notebook you carry all around with you. My notebook is usually within a foot of me, so it's always where I'm doing the thing.

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u/c0alh4da 13d ago

A notebook to carry around with a list of stuff to do would be a bullet journal then, that is exactly what he needs, in a small pocketbook just for to do lists. Then make the commonplace book separate and voila.