Benjamin Franklin’s Daily Schedule

Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790

“I enter’d upon the execution of this plan for self-examination, and continu’d it with occasional intermissions for some time. I was surpris’d to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined ; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish,” Franklin wrote of the life-plan of which this timetable was a part.

But he didn’t actually follow the schedule, deeming himself too important. “My scheme of ORDER gave me the most trouble ; and I found that, tho’ it might be practicable where a man’s business was such as to leave him the disposition of his time, that of a journeyman printer, for instance, it was not possible to be exactly observed by a master, who must mix with the world, and often receive people of business at their own hours,” Franklin wrote.1

Links

  1. The Atlantic