Benjamin Franklin’s pursuit of virtue and productivity has been the subject of some popular blog posts over on LifeHacker and The Art of Manliness. One of his interesting tools was to write down summaries of the virtues he valued; have his press print up a little handbook of them as a weekly calendar; and track himself. This is something we can apply to our practice, which we’ll get to in a moment.
One of the thirteen virtues Franklin chose
Franklin’s goal was to have a blemish free life; a clean slate, so to speak. Franklin tracked himself by putting little marks in the boxes whenever he felt he hadn’t met the virtue on a certain day. Here’s a quote from his autobiography on the matter:
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.
Franklin’s choice of thirteen virtues works out very well with the calendar, allowing the person tracking themselves to work their way through the virtues four times over the course of the year.
In Asatru, many people go with the Nine Noble Virtues – the number of which seems arbitrary beyond the respect for the number nine in Asatru.
Regardless, I decided to try out Ben Franklin’s exercise with a slightly personalized NNV for the next year and two weeks: Nine Virtues tracked six times over 54 weeks.
I made up a similar chart using Word and sent it off to Office Depot for printing and binding. I left some space between the chart and the margins to allow for written-in modifications, notes, thoughts, etc., as the experiment goes on.
Anybody else want to take a crack at it?
If you’d like to try it out, you can download the PDF I made here: Nine Virtues
I would absolutely welcome anyone to make their own version if they disagree with the chosen virtues or definitions/associations.
If you’d like me to supply the Word document I used so you can more easily make modifications, let me know!
I don’t plan on posting about this regularly, but I’ll be sure to share any updates or musings as the experiment progresses. I’d love to hear from you if you decide to take it up, too!
Journey of an Asatruar 