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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Name: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — Summary Cards
Author: Benjamin Franklin (1791)

Benjamin Franklin wrote the original self-improvement manual as the story of his own life. Twenty-five cards on the runaway apprentice who systematized everything: teaching himself to write, the thirteen-virtues project, the errata he owned, the Junto and the library he built, Poor Richard's proverbs, and a public career run on questions, diffidence, and useful projects.

Based on Franklin's Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin (1791)

The System · The Apprentice · The Virtues · The Public Man · The Examined Life

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Franklin's Autobiography

#01

The System

A book of red-ink columns

The System

The Thirteen Virtues

Franklin conceived “the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection” — then did what no moralist had: he built a tracker for it.

“I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time.” Willpower alone failed: while he guarded one fault, another surprised him. Habits had to be built, not resolved.

So he listed thirteen virtues — Temperance through Humility — and ruled a little book in red ink: seven columns for the days, thirteen rows, a black spot for each fault.

One virtue got his full attention each week. Thirteen weeks made a course; four courses made a year — a garden weeded one bed at a time.

Franklin's Autobiography

#02

The System

Own the misprint, fix the plate

The System

Errata: A Printer's Word for Mistakes

Franklin named his life's wrongs with a printer's term: errata. Not concealed, not agonized over — listed, owned, and corrected where the plate still allowed.

Breaking his indenture to escape his brother's beatings, he judged himself plainly: “It was not fair in me to take this advantage, and this I therefore reckon one of the first errata of my life.”

The metaphor does real work. A sin condemns the author; an erratum marks a correctable fault in one passage of a long book — answered with a correction slip, not despair.

He opened the book with it: he would happily relive his life, “only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.”

Franklin's Autobiography

#03

The System

Reverse-engineer the best

The System

The Spectator Method

With one odd volume of essays, a teenage printer's apprentice built himself a writing school: note, wait, rebuild, compare, correct.

Franklin found a stray third volume of the Spectator and “thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it.” With no teacher available, he invented the drill.

He took the papers, “making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then… try'd to compleat the papers again” — then compared with the original and corrected his faults.

Short of vocabulary, he turned tales into verse and back. Then he jumbled the hints and re-ordered them weeks later, “to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts.”

Franklin's Autobiography

#04

The Apprentice

Start where you land

The Apprentice

Three Puffy Rolls

October 1723: a seventeen-year-old runaway walks up Market Street — dirty, exhausted, a Dutch dollar to his name, a bread roll under each arm.

Blocked from every Boston printing house by his brother, Franklin sold his books, boarded a sloop in secret, and reached Philadelphia in his working dress, “fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest.”

Not knowing the local bread, he asked for three-penny worth of any sort: “He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls… walk'd off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other.”

Deborah Read watched him pass from her father's door and “thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance.” She later married him.

In this deck

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Thirteen Virtues

Errata: A Printer's Word for Mistakes

The Spectator Method

Three Puffy Rolls

In this deck

The Thirteen Virtues

Errata: A Printer's Word for Mistakes

The Spectator Method

Three Puffy Rolls

A Biscuit and a Glass of Water

The Socratic Turn

Why Temperance Came First

Industry, Visible and Real

Sincerity and Justice

Moderation and Tranquility

The Speckled Axe

Humility, Added Last

The Morning Question

The Junto

The Subscription Library

Put Yourself Out of Sight

Poor Richard's Almanack

The Favor That Makes a Friend

Projects Over Positions

Electricity, Made Useful

Speak with Modest Diffidence

A Reasonable Creature

The Most Acceptable Service

Better by the Endeavour

The Unfinished Life

The Thirteen Virtues

Errata: A Printer's Word for Mistakes

The Spectator Method

Three Puffy Rolls