The Brilliance of Ben: 7 Lessons That Apply To The World Today
Ben Franklin is one of the most interesting characters of American history. Here’s what I learned from him:
#1 Reinvention
“But the most interesting thing Franklin invented, and continually reinvented was himself.”
Ben Franklin was a printer, a writer, a postmaster, a community organizer, a philosopher, a scientist, an inventor, and a diplomat. No one role defined him, and he was consistently able to transition to new endeavors because of his wide-reaching curiosity and the connections he made.
We can reinvent ourselves too. Our majors and first jobs out of college don’t define us (neither do our second, third, fourth, or fifth jobs).
Recently at an event I organized, I had people fill out name tags, but the rules were they couldn’t fill it out with their names or job titles. They had to write down something else that described them. This is another, maybe smaller way to reinvent ourselves.
#2 Self-Education
“As part of his self-improvement course, Franklin read the essays, took brief notes, and laid them aside for a few days. Then he tried to recreate the essay in his own words, after which he compared his composition to the original. Sometimes he would jumble up the notes he took, so that he would have to figure out on his own the best order to build the essay’s argument.”
This is an example of deliberate practice. Franklin’s method caused him to improve his technique, orient himself towards his goals, and continually gather immediate feedback.
Overall, it helped him become a better essayist and builder of arguments. We can use this method in our own way to become an expert at something.
#3 Generosity
At 17 after running away from home, he traveled to Philadelphia to become an apprentice. “In his pocket he had nothing more than a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper, the latter of which he gave to the boatmen to pay for his passage. They tried to decline it, because Franklin had helped with the rowing, but he insisted. He also gave away two of the three puffy rolls he bought to a mother and child he had met on the journey.” Franklin wrote: ‘A man is sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty.’
How could you give more of yourself? Maybe you’ve promised that you’ll give more in the future after you’ve accumulated wealth, but why not start right now?
#4 Equal Opportunity & Freedom of Expression
“‘The opinions people have, Franklin wrote, are almost as various as their faces. The job of printers is to allow people to express these differing opinions. There would be very little printed if publishers produced only things that offended nobody. Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.’”
Isn’t it fascinating how many media companies don’t live up to these words today? What truth is being masked?
#5 Humility & Religious Tolerance
“‘It would be vain’, he wrote, ‘for any person to insist that all the doctrines he holds are true and all he rejects are false. The same could be said of the opinions of different religions as well.’”
What if everything we believe is wrong? Are we accepting of other possibilities?
#6 Solving Problems
“’The same convexity of glass through which a man sees clearest and best at the distance proper for reading is not the best for greater distances. I therefore had formerly two pair of spectacles, which I shifted occasionally. Finding this change troublesome, and not always sufficiently ready, I had the glasses cut and half of each kind associated in the same circle. By this means as I wear my spectacles constantly, I have only to move my eyes up or down, as I wanted to see distinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready.’”
Instead of living with the problem of having to change between two different pairs of classes, Ben invented a solution: bifocals. What problem are we living with that we could attempt to solve?
#7 Long-Term Thinking
“’Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding or relating; but when they consider that though dust blown into the eyes of a single person, or into a single shop on a windy day, is but of small importance, yet the greatest number of the instances in a populous city, and its frequent repetitions give it weight and consequence, perhaps they will not censure very severely those who bestow some attention to affairs of this seemingly low nature. Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.’”
In other words: seemingly small actions or events, that when repeated frequently, can become hugely influential. What everyday actions or events are we not paying attention to currently?
The quotes and information in this post were drawn from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Ben Franklin.
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