My commonplace book, or “second brain,” started in OneNote before I upgraded to Notion. I used Notion for a little over a year. It was great, and I would recommend it to people starting to practice digital notetaking. There are plenty of templates and tutorials, as well as an easy onboarding process. However, I needed something more flexible, and I started to dislike shoehorning myself into templates. If you love aesthetics, Notion is definitely up your alley.
After several attempts to make my notes Pinterest-worthy, I came to the realization I was one of those boring notetakers. If I did not put extreme effort into styling my notes, I defaulted to simple headings, subheadings, and bullet points with the occasional colored text or highlighting. So, I turned to an app that reflected my minimalist nature.
Currently, my commonplace book lives on Obsidian with a few handy plug-ins. I treat it like a content filing system: the main folders, subfolders, and content. Occasionally, there are two levels of subfolders, but I like to keep the hierarchy simple and straightforward. My practice is to first file or establish a “home” for the content before creating it.
Besides the usual notes, my digital commonplace book also contains outlines and drafts of writing pieces from essays to fiction to poetry. When I am close to done writing an essay or story, I will transfer it to Word or Scrivener to properly format it.
