Benjamin Franklin's Habits Regarding Productivity

Benjamin Franklin’s Habits Regarding Productivity

            Being a highly influential and successful man, Benjamin Franklin attributed an abundance of his success and affluence to his morning routine. Starting his day early, he coined the phrase “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” 
            Between the hours after his waking from 5 am to 8 am, he would “Rise, wash, and address Powerful Goodness! Contrive [the] day’s business, and take the resolution of the day: prosecute the present study and breakfast.” From 8 am to 12 pm, Franklin engaged in a four-hour block of hyper-focused work. From 12 to 2 pm, he would then read, manage his finances, and eat lunch. Subsequently, he worked from 2 to 6 pm and returned the workspace to normal, ate, and reviewed his day from 6 to 10 pm. Once the night reached 10 pm, he slept.

            You may notice on the left-hand side of the document that some questions lie under “Morning” and “Evening.” As a mirror reflects the effort you put into your appearance, Franklin’s asking these questions reflects the effort he has contrived at both the day’s beginning and ending. The initial morning question, in short, sets an overarching goal to be achieved throughout the day. It is the sole purpose, the main idea, the controlling idea of your day. On another note, the evening question reflects how well you achieved that goal.

            But let us take note of the habit of daily reflection. Reflecting on how you did on achieving your goal, why you did what you did, and what you can do to make tomorrow better is a novel habit that many Americans simply overlook. However, analyzing where “things went wrong” and making incremental improvements to your daily habits can save time, effort, and headaches later on.  

            Another habit of Ben’s was to pick an area lacking improvement in his life. This area is called a virtue (an area lacking improvement at any given time in your life). Benjamin Franklin developed 13 virtues:

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Using an old-fashioned form of an excel spreadsheet, Franklin grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, made a table similar to the one below, and tracked one virtue per week. After picking a virtue to improve, he would place a dot on the day representing the number of times he failed that virtue. For example, in the box on the left-hand side marked “T” for temperance, he did not acquire any dots, meaning that he flawlessly completed the execution of the virtue of temperance. However, in the box below it, marked with an “S” for silence, he failed twice on Sunday, once on Monday, once on Wednesday, and once on Friday. This entire table would become of great use to Franklin over a 13-week time frame. Because he was able to have a visual representation and an aesthetically pleasing, simple table, he was able to review how well he did in pursuing excellence over that 13-week time frame, track and manage his goals, and reward good behavior while simultaneously having a visual reminder of the bad ones.

            Now, after having read this, I will give you a brief overview of the sheer amount of ambition, success, work ethic, and achievement of Benjamin Franklin.

      1.      Established a group known as the “Junto” to improve the group as well as the people of Philadelphia

      2.      Founded the first German newspaper in America, the Pennsylvania Gazette

      3.      Recognized by the governor of Pennsylvania for his writings at a young age

      4.      Established the first library in America

      5.      Became Clerk of the General Assembly

      6.      Became the Postmaster General

      7.      Knew six languages: German, English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin

      8.      Became the first known chess player in America

      9.      Was the only Founding Father to sign all four founding documents of America

    10.  Discovered electricity

    11.  Invented the lightning rod, the glass harmonica, bifocals, the hand paddle, the Franklin stove, and his own electrostatic machine

    12.  And he did all of this while being raised in an extremely poor household housing nearly 20 immediate family members.

Disclaimer: Although Franklin was able to carry out this routine fairly consistently, he was not able to do this every single day. So, if you commit to something, do not beat yourself up for failing once. Simply analyze your mistakes, and do better tomorrow!

            One more interesting habit to note was that he learned Italian by playing chess. Pairing up with a friend of equally proficient chess-playing abilities, Franklin would play a match. After determining the winner and loser of the match, the loser was required to memorize a portion of the language, while the winner was able to bask in their victory. By doing this, Franklin was able to essentially kill two birds with one stone. He was able to become a better chess player while gaining fluency in a language simply by playing the game. And, the significance of this is that you can do this with any game. Attempting to learn Spanish with my girlfriend Brianna, using the popular card game UNO, I was able to learn an abundance of vocabulary and verb conjugations. So, with this, I recommend checking out Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography linked here.

Once again, thanks for the support.

References

Benjamin Franklin. (2007, July 30). Daily Routines. Print Advertisement. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Benjamin-Franklin/dp/1640320032

Thirteen virtues. (n.d.). Print Advertisement. Retrieved from http://www.thirteenvirtues.com/