Benjamin Franklin
One virtue a week
Even character has to be put on a schedule
The Autobiography, Part Two
He drew up thirteen virtues, then did the thing nobody resolving to improve ever does. The design of the little book.
What actually happened?
In his twenties he listed thirteen virtues, temperance through humility. The list is not the interesting part; the execution design is. I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time. One virtue a week, the other twelve merely recorded and not demanded. A little book, a page per virtue, ruled into columns, examined every evening, a black spot for each fault. Thirteen weeks a course, four courses a year. He admits his scheme of Order gave him the most trouble.
Working on thirteen is working on none
Attention is the only scarce resource in the system. Run everything at once and each item gets a thirteenth of it, nowhere near the strength required for anything to become a habit. Serial is not the slow way round. It is the only way anything accumulates.
Eight resolutions in January are all gone by February. One thing held for four weeks before the next is added leaves you three real habits by December.
Record the faults, not the wins
What goes into the book is failure: a mark for every breach. That makes the evening check objective and cheap. You never have to appraise how well the day went, only answer whether it happened. Countable failures drive change harder than a vague sense of progress.
A tick or a cross against did I cut anybody off today beats rating your own communication out of ten. The first leaves no room for interpretation.
The spots never came out and the system still ran
He kept at it for life and the Order column always had marks on it. A man buying an axe wanted the whole face bright, turned the grindstone a while, and decided he liked a speckled axe best. Franklin admits he is that axe. A system needing perfection is abandoned at the first breach.
The person who stops the whole programme after missing twice loses to the person who goes once a week and never resets the counter.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: the list of things you want to change runs to several items.
Ask first: which single one is this week's? Can the rest be recorded only, and not required of you yet?
Where it goes wrong: opening on all fronts and abandoning all of them in three weeks; or declaring the system a failure at the first black spot.
Lines to keep
My scheme of Order gave me the most trouble.
I think I like a speckled axe best.
Same situation, other people are asking
I practice constantly and I'm not getting better.There are six things I want to fix and I'm fixing none of them.I go hard for a week and then touch nothing for a month.I set the same resolution every January and land in the same place.I want to change a habit · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.