He was basically doing self-tracking over 200 years before the Quantified Self movement got off the ground. The way he went about this was to pick one virtue to work on every day, and record on an ivory board how many times he failed to exercise that virtue on that day. At one point in his life, he decided to cultivate a set of 13 virtues in himself. On the other hand, he combined this with what we would now regard as a nerdy interest in meticulous self-improvement and scientific curiosity. He made friends easily with people from every walk of life, and was particularly adept at creating sizable groups of like-minded friends. On one hand, he was a consummate networker. One of Franklin’s gifts, and arguably the key to his success, was his rare combination of gregariousness and unquenchable intellectual curiosity.
It’s clear that even if he hadn’t happened to live during interesting times, he was destined to succeed at those goals, and it’s worth figuring out why. Rather, throughout his life his highest principles were simply to improve himself, be useful in society, and be somewhat well-liked and locally influential. He was born to a moderately prosperous middle-class family, and was never brought up with the intention or ambition of rising to great office or weighty responsibilities. He was not born with unique, unapproachable gifts, though he was a talented writer. Franklin, more than most famous people, feels remarkably very human-scaled. Aside from providing interesting insights into the life of one of the Founding Fathers, this book was an unexpectedly interesting set of thoughts on what makes someone successful.
I recently read Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.
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