Why Your Notebooks Aren’t Working (And What I Learned from John Locke)

This is Part 1 of a 5-part series on notebook indexing, “The Art of Finding Anything.” [View the full series here.]

Introduction

I juggle a demanding career, family life, and a desire for personal growth. I’m constantly reading and absorbing information—from industry articles and books on media, advertising, technology, and marketing trends to parenting advice and reflections on my own experiences. For years, I found that my digital notes were getting lost in the shuffle, and my physical notebooks were becoming unwieldy. I needed a system to manage the “mental load” of both my professional and personal life.

As a full-time knowledge worker and working mother, my note-taking had become a chaotic mix of digital and analog. I use Notion as my primary knowledge management tool, supplemented by an ever-growing collection of Apple Notes and a stack of physical notebooks. But over the past few years, I’ve felt increasingly drawn to analog methods — a deliberate step toward creating a tangible filter against the constant digital noise that surrounds us.

I’d accumulated years’ worth of digital notes on the books I’d read, and I envisioned creating a physical record of the knowledge I’d gained from my reading. A commonplace book: a collection of wisdom and a practical reference tool that would evolve through regular review and reflection.

But I quickly realized the potential problem: ending up with numerous notebooks overflowing with information, yet lacking a clear system for retrieving specific details.

The “Just Write” Method (Don’t Do This)

My initial approach to organizing my notes could be summed up as the “just write” method. I simply wrote everything sequentially, thinking I’d somehow be able to find what I needed later.

This proved disastrous.

I quickly found myself spending hours searching for specific notes, wading through pages of unrelated information. The lesson learned was clear: without structure, notes become a black hole, swallowing information and making it nearly impossible to retrieve.

I was capturing plenty. I just couldn’t retrieve any of it systematically.

Discovering Historical Systems

My “aha” moment came when I discovered historical note-taking systems, particularly English physician and philosopher John Locke’s indexing method. It turns out that people have been solving this exact problem for centuries—and their solutions still work.

Before I share the system that works best for me (that’s coming in the next post), let me walk you through the main approaches I explored. Each has its own strengths and might suit different styles of thinking and note-taking habits.

The Page-by-Page Index

This approach involves creating a complete index of every page in your notebook. You reserve several pages at the front, creating two columns: a narrow one for page numbers and a wider one for topics. It’s similar to what you might find in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook and works particularly well if you like having a detailed overview of your entire notebook’s contents. It’s basically a table of contents for your notebook.

The advantage of this system is its completeness; nothing gets lost or overlooked. However, it can become time-consuming to maintain and might include more detail than necessary for quick reference.

The Color-Coding Method

This approach involves creating a color key at the beginning of your notebook and using page margins to color-code entries by theme. You can use small, colorful stickers or markers to designate different categories of notes.

The beauty of this system lies in its visual accessibility: you can quickly flip through your notebook and spot entries by their color codes. However, it doesn’t allow for precise lookup of specific entries and works better as a supplementary system rather than a primary indexing method.

John Locke’s Historical Method

This approach, developed by the philosopher John Locke, involves creating an index on two facing pages with the alphabet subdivided by vowels (A, E, I, O, U). Whenever an entry was made, Locke would reference the main subject or keyword, find its initial letter and the first following vowel, and record the page number of the entry in the corresponding slot of the index.

Structure of the Index

• The index consisted of a matrix where every letter of the alphabet was listed, and under each letter, all five vowels appeared.
• When a new entry was added, the topic would be classified based on its first letter and the first vowel that followed.
• The page number containing the entry was noted under the correct letter-vowel combination in the index.

Example

For instance, if the topic was “Epistle,” it would be indexed under “E” and “I” (first letter E, first vowel I). “Money” would be filed under “M” and “O” (M for the first letter, O for the first vowel).

It’s an elegant system that has stood the test of time.

When I first encountered it, I was struck by how thoughtfully it addressed the retrieval problem. But I also found it more complex than necessary for modern note-taking needs. The vowel subdivisions felt like overkill for how I actually search for things.

What I Landed On

After experimenting with these approaches, I’ve settled on a modified system that adapts Locke’s method into something more streamlined and practical for contemporary use. I call it the Margin and Index Method.

It’s simple enough to maintain consistently, but powerful enough to make any note findable within seconds. It’s transformed how I capture and retrieve information; creating a second brain that evolves with me, one that makes my thoughts and discoveries accessible when I need them most.

In the next post, I’ll walk you through exactly how to set it up.

Next in this series: [The Margin and Index Method: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Anything in Your Notebook →]

The best system isn’t the most complex or the simplest. It’s the one you’ll actually use consistently. If your notebooks currently feel like black holes, the problem isn’t you. It’s the system. And that’s fixable.

Read the full series: The Art of Finding Anything: A Complete Guide to Notebook Indexing:

1. Why Your Notebooks Aren’t Working — The problem and the landscape of solutions 
2. The Margin and Index Method — The step-by-step tutorial 
3. The Weekly Review — The habits that make the system work
4. Troubleshooting Your Index — Common problems and fixes
5. How to Actually Start — Getting off the fence and building momentum