A good index is a beautiful thing. Flip to the back of a nonfiction book and you’ll find every topic discussed, along with the page numbers where it appears.
Here’s a shot of the index from The Mind on Fire, a biography of Emerson’s life.
Okay, what do we have here? On the very first page of this index, I can already see entries for Susan B. Anthony, St. Augustine, and Francis Bacon. Nice! It even tells me that if I want to learn more about Mr. Francis Bacon, I can flip to pages 12, 45, 56, 214, 319, and 519.
That’s all an index is—a guide to finding knowledge on a specific topic or idea within a book.
Emerson loved a good index. Why? Because he had stacks of journals scattered all over the house, and his best ideas were often lost inside them.
Have you ever felt that? It’s the number one reason people switch to digital notes—because they’re searchable. That’s a nice feature, but what if we could search our analog journals too?
I don’t know about you, but I’ll take paper notebooks over digital ones any day. And that’s why having an index gets me all sorts of excited.
Let’s begin by looking at Mr. Locke’s method.
The John Locke Indexing Method
John Locke, English philosopher and physician (1632-1704) |
Emerson experimented with several indexing methods. One of the most popular at the time was the John Locke method. Emerson eventually abandoned it because it was too complex, but I want to share it with you for one reason: an indexing method has to be easy, or you won’t stick with it.
Locke’s system is far too complicated for most people, but who knows—it might resonate with you. Here’s how it worked: whenever Locke came across a keyword or topic in his journals that he wanted to track, he recorded the first letter of the word and the first vowel that followed it.
I know, it’s already getting a little ridiculous.
Here’s how he explained it (in his own words):
I take a white paper book of what size I think fit, I divide the two first pages which face one another, by parallel lines, into five and twenty equal parts, with black lead; after that, I cut them perpendicular by other lines, which I draw from the top of the page to the bottom, as you may see (below) … Afterwards I mark with ink every fifth line of the twenty five that I just now spoke of. … I put at the beginning of every fifth space, or before the middle, one of the twenty letters which are defign’d for this use; and a little farther in every space one of the vowels in their natural order. This is the index or table of the whole volume, be it of what size forever.
Let’s Look at an Example
Let me remind you—Emerson dropped this method. I don’t use it either. But plenty of people do like the John Locke Index, so let’s crack it open.
Let’s say you’re journaling away, lost in your thoughts, and you start writing about dandelions—maybe you’re learning to garden. You want to track your dandelion research, so you decide that everything on page 78 of your notebook should be indexed under “dandelions.”
Step 1: Define the keyword = Dandelion
Step 2: Identify the first letter of the keyword = D
Step 3: Identify the first vowel = a
Step 4: Open your table at the beginning of the notebook (As created in the picture above), and find the section Da.
Step 5: Add the page #78 to the Da section.
Now, whenever you want to revisit what you wrote about dandelions, you’d just grab your gardening notebook, flip to the front index, scroll down to “Da,” and there it is—you’ll know exactly where to go.
This Week’s Journaling Homework
📝YOUR HOMEWORK: Spend a little time looking into the John Locke method. You’ll find plenty of YouTube videos and more than a few rabbit holes to explore. See if it’s a system that works for you—or, if it feels too complicated, hang tight. I’ll share a simpler approach next week!
👋 Until next week, read slowly – take notes – apply the ideas.
-Eddy
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Works Cited:
Richardson, Robert D. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. University of Iowa Press, 2009.
Richardson, Robert D. Emerson: The Mind on Fire. University of California Press, 1995.
