I've tried this before. It's hard work to write everything you encounter down on paper. Thank god for laptops.
It's an interesting practice, a sign of a time when information was a more precious commodity and had to be seized when it was found, lest you forget. Thankfully, it's easier than ever to do today with digital tech.<p>"Commonplace books were used by scientists and other thinkers in the same way that a database might now be used: Carl Linnaeus, for instance, used commonplacing techniques to invent and arrange the nomenclature of his Systema Naturae (which is the basis for the system used by scientists today)."<p>Nowadays, a browser bookmark system plus a few other tools like Calibre serve the same function for me; to store all the information I come across into a single repository. It's an important task for any knowledge-seeking person today to figure out how to store and organize the vast amount of useful info there is to find.