Keeping a Curiosity Journal

I’ve been a voracious reader all my life. But this year I realised that while I was reading consistently (and obsessively), I was only retaining a fraction of the stuff that mattered. The rest was just whizzing off into oblivion. I needed to find a way to process all this important and incredibly interesting material.

I started simply, by copying the highlights from my Kindle notes. It was useful but limiting because I was recording information, but not gleaning much from it. Gradually, a system started to emerge — A form of visual summaries indexed for future referencing.

Assembling the Journal

Your journal is going to travel with you, because you never know what you might learn and from where. I have 3 considerations:

1. Portability: While I believe in the Cathedral Effect — more headspace for lofty thoughts, I’ve settled for DIY journals in A5. I keep them slim, and they give me enough real estate to capture words and pictures.
2. Durability: These journals will go places, they’ll be crammed into bags, you might find yourself writing on greasy airline tables. My journals fit as inserts in my Traveler’s Notebook. The cover is made of tough leather, it’s a survivor.
3. Messiness: You are capturing thoughts, they are messy things. If you get fussy about handwriting, scratches and squiggles, you’ll never use it.

A quick guide to making your own journals… because, why not?

1. Get the materials

Loose A4 sheets, A4 sized soft cardboard cover, centre stapler (very useful), craft knife, steel ruler and index cards.

2. Square up about 20–25 sheets, place them in the A4 cover, fold them in half — Viola! You have an 80–100 sides notebook!. But not so fast…

3. Staple thrice across the centre line — near the top, middle and bottom.

4. Trim off the edges along the long side of the notebook. Now it’s ready.

I use Tomoe River 68 GSM paper for my journals as it is fountain pen friendly. Depending on your skill with a paper cutter, the notebook might look a tad bit untidy — don’t worry about it, you’ll have plenty of time to get used to it.

My Traveler’s Notebook has 3 inserts — Curiosity Journal, Poetry Journal and a Sketchbook.

Filling it Up

Your Curiosity Journal is your repository of knowledge, your own personal encyclopaedia. You want to capture information, you also want to present it in a way that’s conducive to scanning, more importantly, it needs to help you understand the content, and finally, it needs to be searchable — you should find what you are looking for.

1. Capturing Information

I mostly read on the Kindle, and highlight constantly. After a read through, I go through the book again, but focus on the highlighted passages. These populate and inform my journal. But not all of it, the Curiosity Journal is more synthesised — quotes, notes, my own interpretations and summaries. The same process applies to real world books and online articles. For podcasts, I quickly scribble curious bits which I revisit in the transcripts.

These journals are also great for capturing any ideas inspired by the material you are reading.

Doodling Baudillard made me think that The Matrix had a lot in common with his philosophy. Turns out, it was inspired by it!

2. Making it Visual and Scannable

We digest content best in chunks. I prefer to use dot grid or plain sheets over ruled sheets, because they give me the flexibility of arranging content in a way that I know will work for me. So there’ll be a quote, there’ll be diagrams, and drawings, some side notes and a bunch of observations, packed in a way that can be scanned quickly.

Mind Maps are excellent for creating summaries. I usually read a chapter and then mind map it, going back to the book to fill in the gaps — it’s a pretty solid way of embedding info in your brain.

Note the title with the author’s name. I often include the name of the book or online source. These drawings serve multiple functions.

Even if you don’t sketch, give doodling a shot, it serves a bunch of purposes. This is how I see it, a visual representation — doodle, sketch, stick figures, diagrams, mind maps, distances you from the source material, and encourages you to apply analogies, simplify the content and compare it with what you know. Since you process it deeper, it becomes easier to apply it to your own work.

A visual creates a buffer between reading and comprehending. It helps you understand and explain better as you are using multiple ways of thinking when you draw; you are literally reading between the lines. Besides, it naturally chunks your content, improving readability. Finally, it makes your journal more engaging.

I recommend Dan Roam’s books as a starting point, as well as Mike Rohde’s Sketchnote Handbook.

3. Indexing is the Secret Sauce

What good is knowledge if you can’t find it? My method is nowhere as elaborate as I’d like it to be, and I think it has scope for digitisation.

I look at the index and wonder — holy cow, what all have I been reading! Lots of ideas for projects captured too — poetry workshop, blog posts etc.

I number every page, and once the journal is done, I simply write down the page number next to the topic on an index card. If I’m reading a book, the content is often scattered across pages — interspersed between snippets from other books; So I just list all the page numbers related to that topic in one line. As far as possible, I try not to spread any single source across multiple journals. One way to ensure this is to stop reading the book at a certain point — bang in the middle or at the end of a section — and only go back to it once all the thoughts have been captured.

In the near future I’ll probably enter all that data into a home library management system for quicker access. It’ll allow me to follow Shane Parrish’s advice — when you are learning something, follow the topic, not the book. Basically, you don’t need to read the whole book, just look at the index and read what’s most critical.

The stuff that doesn’t get indexed are sketched quotes. They are little gifts to myself when I riffle through the pages of these journals.

I invariably have about 2–3 fountain pens with different coloured ink, and a water brush on me on any given day. It’s enough to make things interesting.

What happens next?

Revision is the key to learning. Once I’m done with a journal I stack it up with its siblings. I revisit these journals about once a month. It’s not so much about gleaning as it is about getting a gist, and keeping track of what has been recorded. It’s amazing how this stuff manifests into usefulness. Some examples of applied curiosity:

1. An HBR article inspired a Brand Values Definition Framework for a client
2. A few interesting daily planner templates set off a bunch of ideas for concept notebooks — thinker tools
3. Poetry reappeared after a sabbatical of many years
4. Tons of cross-disciplinary insights for design thinking workshops
5. Lots of material for my knowledge project @LessOrdinaryis

Keeping a Curiosity Journal has been satisfying on multiple levels. It brings a lot of perspective, and shapes one’s world view. A Curiosity Journal enriches our toolbox of mental models, so we can see how things link to each other. Personally though, it allows me to live a life of broad margins.

1. It motivates me to stay curious and inspired
2. When I capture some information, it becomes mine
3. Putting it on paper relieves the stress of keeping it in mind
4. It becomes a mirror of sorts, because we are what we are interested in
5. And, this might be naive and presumptuous, but I’d like to imagine my folks in the future getting to know me through these pages— maybe they’ll find it hilarious, or maybe it’ll forge a connection across time, the way my grandfather connected with us through his journals — he was a curious fellow too, he taught himself German in his August years and wrote with a Parker 21

That’s it. You can find me on Instagram @BigFatbooksBlog and @LessOrdinaryis. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing pages from your Curiosity Journal. Let’s co-infect.