Ben Franklin’s Morning Question That Still Works Today: A Deeper Look at the Little Book That Shaped His Life
September 26, 2026 — 65Nation
Benjamin Franklin had a lot of ideas. But one of his simplest habits is getting a second look from psychologists today and it has nothing to do with kite-flying in a thunderstorm.
Every morning, Franklin asked himself one question: “What good shall I do this day?” He recorded it in his autobiography, as reported by the New York Times. And according to three psychologists, it is still one of the best ways to start a day. They explained to Parade how it actually works.
When we ran that story this week, it became our most-read article of the week. It also left a few questions on the breakfast table. Where did Franklin get the idea in the first place? What did the rest of his morning look like? Did he actually stick with it? And what does modern research say about a day built around doing good? So, we went looking.
A Boyhood Book With Missing Pages
The question has roots in Franklin’s Boston boyhood. In May 1784, writing from Passy, just outside Paris, Franklin told the Reverend Samuel Mather about a book he had come across as a boy: Essays to Do Good, written by Mather’s father, the well-known Boston minister Cotton Mather.
The copy was in rough shape. A previous owner had cared so little for it that several pages were torn out. What remained was enough. Franklin wrote that the book gave him a turn of thinking that shaped his conduct for the rest of his life. He had always valued the character of a “Doer of Good” above any other kind of reputation, he explained, and if he had been a useful citizen, the public owed it to that book.
The idea took hold early. As a teenager, Franklin slipped the first of a series of anonymous essays under the door of his brother’s Boston print shop. He signed them “Silence Dogood.” Historians generally see the surname as a likely nod to Mather’s book.
What the Rest of His Morning Looked Like
The famous question sat at the top of a single page in a small notebook Franklin kept. He called that page his “Scheme of Employment for the Twenty-four Hours of a natural Day.”
Mornings ran from 5 to 8 a.m. He would rise, wash, and “address Powerful Goodness,” a phrase generally understood as morning prayer. Then he planned the day’s business, settled on a resolution for the day, spent time on whatever he was currently studying, and ate breakfast.
Work filled the hours from 8 until noon. From noon to 2, he read or looked over his accounts and had his midday meal. More work followed through the afternoon. Evenings were for putting things back in their places, supper, and “Music, or Diversion, or Conversation,” followed by an examination of the day. He was in bed by 10.
Look closely and you will notice how much of that page belongs to something other than work. Reading, music, good conversation, and quiet reflection each get a spot of their own.
The Little Book Behind the Question
That schedule was one piece of a bigger project. As a young printer in Philadelphia, Franklin drew up a list of 13 virtues he hoped to master: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility. Each came with a short rule of its own. Temperance, for instance, read: “Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
Franklin judged that attempting all 13 at once would only scatter his attention. So he gave each virtue a full week of close focus, marking his slips every evening in his little book. At that pace he could work through the whole list in 13 weeks and repeat it four times a year. Anyone who gardens will appreciate his reasoning. He compared it to weeding one bed at a time, since trying to pull every weed at once would exceed anyone’s reach and strength.
He was refreshingly honest about how it went. When he started, he was surprised to find himself “so much fuller of faults” than he had imagined. He also had the satisfaction of watching those faults shrink. His paper pages eventually wore full of holes from scraping out old marks, so he moved his charts to a memorandum book with ivory pages, ruled in red ink. He marked his faults in pencil and wiped them away with a wet sponge.
As the years went on and his work took him overseas, he ran through the full course less often. But he always carried the little book with him.
The Speckled Axe
One virtue gave Franklin more trouble than the rest: Order, the very one that schedule was built to support. As a master printer, he explained, he had to meet customers and business callers on their timetable, which made a fixed routine hard to keep. Keeping papers and belongings in their proper places was just as tough. He had never been in the habit, and his excellent memory meant he rarely felt the cost of a mess.
He grew so frustrated that he nearly gave up. To explain the temptation, he told a story about a blacksmith who lived nearby.
A man buying an axe from that smith asked for the whole head to be ground as bright as its edge. The smith agreed, on one condition: the customer had to turn the grinding wheel himself. It was exhausting work. The man kept stopping to check the progress and finally said he would take the axe as it was. The smith urged him to keep turning, since the axe was only speckled so far.
The man’s reply: “I think I like a speckled axe best.”
Franklin admitted he was tempted to settle for a speckled axe of his own. Then he offered the line that makes the whole story worth telling. Though he never reached the perfection he had hoped for, he wrote, the effort made him “a better and a happier man” than he otherwise would have been. He compared it to learning penmanship by copying engraved samples. Nobody’s handwriting ever quite matches the model, yet everyone’s hand improves from the practice.
Written in His 79th Year
Franklin wrote this part of his life story in 1784, while living in France, and noted that he was then in his 79th year. Looking back, he told his descendants that he owed the steady happiness of his life, with the blessing of God, to “this little artifice.”
He credited even his imperfect practice of the virtues with giving him an even temper and a cheerful way in conversation, qualities that kept his company “still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger acquaintance.”
His story had plenty of chapters left. Three years later, at 81, Franklin took his seat as the oldest delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
He Practiced What He Asked
Franklin’s question was more than a private exercise. In 1742, he designed an open stove that warmed rooms better while burning less fuel. Pennsylvania’s governor offered him a patent that would have given him the sole right to sell it for years. Franklin turned it down.
His reasoning, in his own words: “as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”
A London ironmonger later patented a version of the stove and, as Franklin heard it, made a small fortune. Franklin never fought it. According to HISTORY.com, he never patented any of his inventions.
That includes the “double spectacles” he described to his friend George Whatley in letters from 1784 and 1785. Franklin is widely credited with that design, which we now know as bifocals. If you are reading this through a pair, consider it one more good Franklin did.
Why Such a Simple Question Still Holds Up
“What I like about looking at someone like Benjamin Franklin is not necessarily that we should try to live the way he did,” says Dr. Ernesto Lira de la Rosa, PhD, a psychologist and media advisor for the Hope for Depression Research Foundation. “However, I do think it’s interesting that the question he asked himself hundreds of years ago still feels pretty relevant.”
Most of us measure our days by what we crossed off a list. Did I get through my email? Was I productive enough? Franklin’s question nudges you in a different direction entirely.
“Asking what good you want to do makes you think about the day a little differently,” Dr. Lira de la Rosa explains.
Dr. Brandy Smith, PhD, a licensed psychologist with Thriveworks, says that framing your morning around doing “good” gives you a positive North Star to return to, even when the day gets hard.
“We generally feel better about ourselves when we do something we view as ‘good,'” she says.
Dr. Smith is quick to add that life’s difficulties deserve room too. A North Star simply makes sure the positives get consistent space alongside them.
Dr. Michele Leno, PhD, a licensed psychologist and host of Mind Matters with Dr. Michele, adds that being intentional first thing in the morning helps you handle whatever comes your way. “Being proactive, not reactive, reduces stress and improves coping,” she says.
She told Parade that questions like Franklin’s especially appeal to anyone who wants a greater sense of control over what lies ahead, because they prompt you to think about what you want and the steps you will take to get there.
The Brain Science Behind It Without the Jargon
Psychologists call this “cognitive priming”, setting an intention early so your brain has something to return to throughout the day.
Dr. Leno describes it this way: “Cognitive priming is an automatic or subconscious process that occurs in the brain when it senses something familiar. The brain has an implicit memory storage that connects emotions and thoughts to prior experience.”
In plain terms, the intention you set in the morning stays somewhere in your awareness. Nobody turns perfect overnight, and that is fine. The intention gives you something to notice and come back to when you get pulled off course.
Dr. Lira de la Rosa offered an everyday example. Say you start the morning intending to be more present. Later, you catch yourself glancing at your phone while someone is talking to you, and you recognize the habit. You are still human. The morning intention is simply what helped you catch it.
“We’re going to get distracted and pulled into things,” Dr. Lira de la Rosa says, “but having that intention gives us something we can notice and return to.”
What Researchers Have Found About Doing Good
Franklin worked without a laboratory. Modern researchers, however, have spent years studying ideas close to his question, and two large American studies stand out.
In 2019, a University of Michigan team published a study in JAMA Network Open that followed 6,985 participants in the Health and Retirement Study, a long-running national study of Americans over 50. People with a stronger sense of purpose in life were significantly less likely to die during the study period. The researchers describe the finding as an association, meaning it shows a link without proving cause. They also noted that a sense of purpose can be changed, which makes it worth building.
A second study, published in 2020 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, drew on nearly 13,000 participants from the same national study. Led by Eric S. Kim, then at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, it found that people who volunteered at least 100 hours a year, roughly two hours a week, had a 44% lower risk of dying during the four-year follow-up than those who did not volunteer. The volunteers were also more physically active and reported more optimism and a greater sense of purpose. Kim suggested that because people are social by nature, our minds and bodies may be rewarded when we give to others.
A single morning question is a small thing. Still, the research points in a direction Franklin would have recognized.
Franklin Also Asked a Question at the End of the Day
He did not stop at morning. Each evening, Franklin asked himself a second question: “What good have I done today?”
Dr. Smith recommends this bookend approach. Looking back over the day helps you fully absorb what went well, and if it is still early enough, it might remind you there is still time to do something meaningful before the day is done.
Her one gentle caution: “Just be sure not to live in the past to the point of robbing your present self of life and living.”
Researchers have tested a close cousin of Franklin’s evening habit. In a 2005 study published in American Psychologist, Martin Seligman, a former president of the American Psychological Association, and his colleagues asked volunteers to write down three things that went well each day, along with why they happened, for one week. Participants reported gains in happiness and fewer depressive symptoms, and those benefits held at the six-month check-in. A later replication suggested the effect on mood may be more modest than first reported. Even so, the habit costs nothing and takes only a few minutes before bed.
How to Make This Work in Your Own Morning
You do not need to copy Franklin’s whole daily schedule. Psychologists suggest borrowing what is useful and leaving the rest. Here are some practical ways to start.
- Think about your sleep. Dr. Smith says it is worth asking whether you are getting enough hours to function the way you want. If an earlier bedtime helps, she says be willing to make that change.
- Give yourself a few minutes before the phone. Dr. Lira de la Rosa puts it simply: “If you wake up and immediately open your email, texts, news, Instagram, whatever it is, you’re starting your day by taking in what everyone else wants from you.” Even five quiet minutes (coffee, a moment to think) can change the tone of the whole morning.
- Keep “doing good” small. Resist turning it into one more thing to perform well at. Dr. Lira de la Rosa says good can be tiny. “Maybe you want to actually take your lunch break. Maybe you want to text someone you’ve been thinking about. These are small things, but they’re also the things that make up our lives.”
- Wake up a little more gently. Dr. Leno said that being jolted awake by a startling alarm can set you up for an anxious day, and many people keep using one without considering how it affects their mental health. If your alarm feels like a fire drill, a softer one may be worth a try.
- Put the question where you will see it. Bestselling author A.J. Jacobs spent a year trying to live like the Founding Fathers for his book The Year of Living Constitutionally. In a 2024 essay for Fox News, he wrote that he now asks himself a version of Franklin’s question and keeps it on a sheet of paper above his desk. A card propped by the coffee maker works just as well.
- Borrow Franklin’s one-week trick. He focused on one virtue per week so his attention would stay put. You might choose a single theme each week, such as patience, generosity, or staying in touch, and let the morning question point you toward it.
- Close the loop at night. Pair the morning question with Franklin’s evening one, or jot down three things that went well and why, the approach Seligman’s team tested.
- Make peace with a speckled axe. Franklin admitted his own practice came with “occasional intermissions,” and he never did master Order. He still called himself better and happier for trying. A skipped morning is simply part of the practice.
It is a short question. Seven words. But there is something about asking it each morning that still holds up after 200 years and that is certainly something.
