The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

重要なポイント

• 一流の模倣、記憶からの再現、比較でスキルを磨く
• 表を使って徳目を記録し、一つずつ身につける
• 日々の行動の積み重ねが、信用を形づくる
• 控えめに語れば、意見はすんなり受け入れられる
• 手柄を分かち合えば、より多くのことを成し遂げられる

このbitの内容

1. 自力で切り拓いた人生の記録

   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. 模倣から独学する

   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. 帳簿に刻む13の徳

   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. 勤勉、倹約、そして信用

   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. 穏やかに説き、ともに築く

   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. 実践に移す

   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.