Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant man. A founding father, writer, scientist, and inventor with an unending sense of curiosity. He was also someone who saw journaling as another way to systematically figure things out and grow as a person.
Franklin was fond of Commonplace books (also known as Zettlekasten), where he would record ideas, quotes, and other passages of wisdom that he wanted to keep. This remains a habit for many and was done by some of history's most significant and best remembered thinkers, including Marcus Aurelius, Virginia Woolf, Sir Isaac Newton, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He also created a Virtue Journal, in which he recorded the thirteen personal virtues (This link includes a cool Notion template too) he wanted to live by, including ideas of temperance, moderation, industry, and humility.
He would spend a week focusing on each virtue, making an effort to learn from it and embody it more completely. He wrote of it in his autobiography:
“I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I crossed these columns with thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter of one of the virtues; on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.”
That's right, Ben Franklin was using a hybrid to-do and project tracking list to manage this.
To better understand how he was using his time, Franklin developed a daily schedule that included daily prompts and an early version of time blocking.
"In the morning, he would ask, "What good shall I do this day?"
He would end his day with "What good have I done today?"
This kind of small-scale reflection, done consistently, reflects a desire to see the nuances of a day and to better understand their effects. That's why I encourage a end-of-day reflection journaling habit.
Mr. Franklin devoted as much effort to personal development as he did to his various roles as a printmaker, diplomat, and statesman. Writing about his practice, he compared himself to a gardener:
“Like him who, having a garden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad herbs at once, but works on one of the beds at a time.”
These tools were not new when Franklin walked the streets of Philadelphia and published Poor Richard's Almanack. Commonplace books, time tracking, daily prompts, and checklists have been integral to the human experience for a long time. Nobody, and no system, is perfect, but trying to organize our thoughts and better understand our emotions through journaling and other tools is worthwhile.
If you know someone who might enjoy learning how to write their own story down, forward this email to them today.
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