The Benjamin Franklin Guide to Kicking Ass at Everything

What do you want for yourself as a musician?

A staggering body of compositions? A consistent and effective practice routine? Killer chops?

Can you really have it all?

Let Ben Franklin show you the way.

The greatest obstacle (arguably the only obstacle) standing between any person and their best possible life is lack of self-discipline. I think of discipline as the habit of following through on desires to learn, grow, and work toward long-term goals… despite inclination to slack off in the short-term. Despite emotional tides, despite external pressures.

Discipline is the vehicle through which we can set our mind to any goal—and have a good shot at attaining it, providing you really want to attain it.

Yet that want can be difficult to establish and maintain; Benjamin Franklin knew this. That’s why he devised a method to remind himself of his goals daily.

First: Set Your Sights.

Ready…

Aim…

Is there a skill you wish to attain? An ideal image of yourself that you want to work toward over the course of the next five or ten years? Something you wish to make a daily habit of? Do you have stalled projects you need to kick-start? Any nagging tasks that you’ve delayed, then delayed again?

Let’s tackle all of them head-on.

First, list them out. You may include any or all of the following:

• Any bad habits that you wish to work out of your life.
• Any new habits you’d like to establish.
• Skills you want to improve.
• Books you want to read.
• Projects you want to complete.
• Any positive traits or ideas you wish to embody.

We’ll get to work on taking action toward these goals and dreams of yours in just a moment. In the meantime, let’s take a quick look at Benjamin Franklin’s project, to see if we can learn anything from his example.

Ben’s Cute Little Goal

From the man himself:

“I conceiv’d the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish’d to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care was employ’d in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another; habit took the advantage of inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.” -From Ben’s Autobiography.

Complete moral perfection? Ben, buddy, you’re nuts. How does one even begin such a colossal undertaking?

Ben began by researching other peoples’ ideas on moral virtues. Having studied those, he then developed his own list of qualities in response. For clarity, he made each item on his list as specific as possible, then jotted a quick line about each to clarify his thoughts on it. Here are the first few items on Ben’s list (there are thirteen altogether):

“1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”

…and so on. You’d do well to also break your goals or problems down into simple items, to increase your focus upon achieving each.

Take it again, Ben.

“My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg’d 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; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro’ the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arrang’d them with that view, as they stand above. Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations. This being acquir’d and establish’d, Silence would be more easy…”

Ben ended up deciding on a period of one week spent working on each of the precepts on his list. Let’s take a second to review all of the work he’s actually done so far.

• Set a crazy, ambitious goal, the kind you don’t even want to tell your friends about.
• Through research and reflection, and his own ingenuity, broke that goal into more manageable, simple pieces.
• Arranged those pieces in a numbered list, ordering them for the best chance of success.

He’s off to a good start, eh? The only thing lacking now is a way to track the results of this experiment, to see whether this plan really does make him a better person over the course of these harrowing thirteen weeks. Here’s how he approached that problem.

“I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul’d 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 cross’d 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.”

Notice that Ben’s tracking his transgressions in all categories at once, even though he’s decided to focus intensely on just one virtue every week. This means he’ll be able to see how he’s doing with Chastity on weeks one and thirteen.

Ben’s model involves breaking bad habits, but if you’d rather use this method to establish positive new ones instead, just mark dots where you succeeded in implementing the plan on a particular day. You could even tack a page on the wall and reward yourself with gold stars, if you like. Go nuts! The more you personalize every aspect of this project, the better your results.

So did he Succeed?

“tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it…”

As it turns out, he did end up doing a few impressive things with his life anyway. Go figure.

Conclusion: Now it’s YOUR Turn to Try and Swallow the Moon.

All you need to do is:

1.Write a list of things you want to accomplish. They needn’t be as epic as B.F.’s.

2.As necessary, break them down into more manageable pieces.

3.Put them in strategic order.

4.Set a timeframe for accomplishing each.

5.Develop a method of holding yourself accountable for progress. Track yourself.

6.Take it day by day, and if you should go astray, troubleshoot and immediately try again.

In the follow-up to this article I’ll be adapting this method to setting a course toward masterly musicianship instead of moral greatness, and setting my own program for establishing perfect practice habits.

Let me know about your goals in the comments!

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