How I preserve meaning in a fast-moving world

At the end of 2025, I reflected on the past year—as many do. As I looked back, I realized that I was struggling to remember all of the little things that I’d done. So many events, facts, and anecdotes that I know were important or exciting to me at the time, but are now just a distant memory.

I knew I’d lived a lot of life, but I didn’t feel like I’d appreciated those moments, nor properly taken them in. It felt like I’d wasted my time, energy, and money on what could now only be recalled as a blur.

All I remembered were the overarching things; I finished my courses, worked a few jobs, and hung out with different people. The specifics escaped me. All year, I felt like I was always just barely keeping up with everything going on, and never actually taking any time to register what I was doing. It was always just onto the next thing, never reflecting upon the experiences, media, people, and content I had been exposed to.

This year, I was determined for things to be different. I researched many of the ways others engaged in practicing mindfulness, improving their recollections of experiences, and emphasizing the significance of smaller, but still important, things.

The issue with most of the techniques I came across was that they required consistent time each day. Being a very overcommitted student, this was something I knew I couldn’t do. Also, I didn’t want to put more pressure on myself to put energy into yet another thing each day.

I eventually came across a method that satisfied my criteria: the commonplace book.

A commonplace book is a knowledge-keeping tool dating back to ancient Greek times. It reached the height of its popularity in the Renaissance period as a response to the influx of accessible information caused by the invention of the printing press. It’s an extremely customizable notebook, and its contents are entirely based on topics of your choosing.

Two pages at the start of the book are set as the index, and the rest is written as you go along. Each time there’s a new topic or theme deemed to be significant, it’s added as the title to the next available page and the corresponding entries are written on that page. This information is then written in the index for ease of location.

If you run out of space on the page for that theme, you simply write the same title on a new page and add that page number to the same index entry. It’s organized enough to be able to locate specific entries, but not so much so that it becomes a hassle to add new ones.

A few of my own topics include quotes from books I’ve read, song lyrics I’ve found particularly meaningful, facts from my university courses I want to explore further, little pieces of writing I’ve done, and lists of media I’ve engaged with, along with my thoughts on them.

This way, nothing that I want to remember is forgotten, but I also don’t need to constantly keep it in my mind, especially when it may not be relevant to my daily tasks at hand. This allows me to keep a clearer head, and the sheer act of taking the time to write about something means I’ve better stored it in my memory.

This way, the book acts as the perfect trigger for memory recall whenever I wish to devote my time to a specific subject of choice or just simply do some reflection.

My favourite aspect of my commonplace book is that all my topics are whatever I’m intrigued by. At the end of the day, this book is a representation of all of my interests, philosophies, beliefs, and other individualities. It is this fact that makes it so effective.

A typical diary-style journal isn’t very digestible when reading back. It tends to be riddled with insignificant and potentially boring details, and realistically, not every day is going to be engaging. With a commonplace book, it’s simply bullet points or quotes about subjects or occurrences that I take great interest in, with no pressure to add to it everyday.

This fact compels me to reread my past entries over and over again. I’m able to take separate thoughts or quotes and connect them to each other, and then I can build new ideas on top of those old ones. It allows me to truly process and engage with the content and perspectives which have had even a small impact on me in my daily life.

I would recommend that everyone try to keep a commonplace book. It’s a no-pressure way to compile one’s thoughts and ideas in an easy and digestible format. Considering it reached the height of its popularity due to an influx of new information, I would say it’s beneficial now more than ever.

We live in a world where we are constantly plagued by novel ideas, facts, content, and people. Personally, it feels like my mind is partially taken up by an ever-present to-do list. My commonplace book has been able to function as an inventory, to relieve my brain of what might not be important at the current moment, but that I would like to keep for when I have some free time.

A commonplace book feels like a way for me to appreciate the smaller things. A way to derive meaning and a more long-term impact from day-to-day experiences. Taking the time to write even just one point about something interesting that influenced my thoughts or mood makes me feel more like I’m truly living.

I don’t want to take in countless hours of media, content, and conversations and have nothing to say for it in a year, simply because I was always moving on to the next thing. In a world that’s so insanely hectic and with so much pressure to constantly get ahead, I believe it’s incredibly important to appreciate the smaller things. It can be so easy to get caught up in the bigger picture that we forget to appreciate merely being alive and getting to feel emotions, come up with unique ideas, and engage in our interests.

It has only been a couple of months, but I feel as though I have already learned a lot, both in regard to the actual content I have ingested, as well as about myself.

I find myself rereading my entries quite often, especially those regarding specific situations, events, or thought patterns that come up a lot in my mind. This helps me to calm some of the recurring anxieties I tend to have. It is a way for me to see that I have already dissected the things I was previously uncertain about. Having the ability to come back to my own words, and get that reassurance from myself, guides me forward as a person.

I’ve noticed patterns in relation to ideas I didn’t think I was that intrigued by. I have seen the kinds of emotions and subject matters that compel a strong enough reaction for me to write them down. This simple notebook has allowed me to not only feel more connected to the world around me but also to myself.

Tags

creative writing, Postscript, Student life

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