The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Key takeaways

• Learn any skill by imitating the best, rewriting from memory and comparing
• Track your virtues on a simple grid and work on one at a time
• Reputation is built by what people see you doing every day
• Speak with modest words and people will stop resisting your ideas
• Share the credit for projects and you will get more of them done

Inside this bit

1. A self-made life told plainly

   A teenage runaway walks into Philadelphia with a few coins, buys three bread rolls and wanders the streets eating one with the others under his arms. The girl watching him laugh will later become his wife.

2. Teach yourself by imitation

   Franklin left school at 10 and learned to write by copying the best. He took essays from an English magazine he admired, made short notes on each, put them away for days, then tried to rebuild the essays from the notes in his own words.

3. Thirteen virtues in a ledger

   Franklin wanted to be morally perfect and, being practical, he built a system. He listed 13 virtues, among them temperance, silence, order, frugality, industry, sincerity and humility, and gave each a short rule.

4. Industry, frugality and reputation

   Franklin built his printing business on two virtues and one insight. The virtues were industry and frugality: work long hours, avoid debt, spend little.

5. Persuade gently, build together

   Young Franklin loved to win arguments and noticed it made him enemies. So he changed his speech, dropping words like certainly and undoubtedly, and saying instead that he imagined a thing to be so, or that it seemed to him.

6. Put it to work

   Pick one piece of writing you admire, make notes on it, wait 3 days and rewrite it from the notes, then compare. Draw a grid of 5 habits you want against the days of this week and mark each lapse with a dot; tackle only one habit at a time.