#3: Building habits the Franklin way
A lot is written about forming habits, but Benjamin Franklin derived his not from what ‘should be done’ but who he wanted to be. Franklin wrote a list of 13 principles he wanted to adhere to in life.
Temperance - Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation
Silence - Speak not but what may benefit others and yourself; avoid trifling conversation
Order - Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time
Resolution - Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve
Frugality - Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e. waste nothing
Industry - Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions
Sincerity - Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly
Justice - Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty
Moderation - Avoid extremes; forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve
Cleanliness - Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation
Tranquility - Be not be disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable
Chastity
Humility - Imitate Jesus and Socrates
I’d add Fitness as no. 14 - curate what your mind consumes; ensure your body gets sufficient exercise.
Franklin’s habit building system is a precursor to `streaks` - doing/not doing something for consecutive days until it becomes a default. Since Duolingo was not around, Franklin used a diary. He would draft a table on the page with the virtues as row headers and days of the week as column headers. At the end of each day, Franklin would review his actions and mark a black spot in the column for every action that defied any of the virtues. For instance, excessive drinking would earn a spot against ‘Temperance’ . While he would examine his behaviour against all virtues, he would focus consciously only on one virtue in a given week, so as to better ingrain the patterns in his behaviour. In this manner, Franklin cycled through all virtues in 13 weeks and would go through this cycle 4 times a year.
He further mentions how humility was not natural to him, and how he attempted to incorporate it in his behaviour:
[I] made it a rule to refrain from all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as 'certainly', 'undoubtedly' etc and I adopted instead of them, "I conceive", "I apprehend", "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or it "so appears to me at present". When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or seemed to me some difference etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly.
Reading:
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin