What good shall I do this day?

As part of his precept of Order, with Humility, the virtue with which he said he had the most trouble, Franklin added an additional chart to the "little book" in which he recorded his progress in virtue.  This one sketched out an ideal workday, so that "each part of [his] Business" could "have its Time."  Here is the chart:

 

As always, I am struck by how reasonable Franklin's structures are.  A two-hour lunch break presumably allows for more focus and good will in an afternoon work session.  I love that he includes time for reading at this point.  The eight-hour day itself bears noting, since in Franklin's time much longer workdays were the norm (in most industrialized countries, the movement for an eight-hour work period got serious only in the 19th century).  Like me, Franklin seems to like long adjustment periods in and out of work – the three-hour stretch in the morning is particularly appealing to me, since I am inefficient in the morning (and I am not talking 5 a.m., either) and like to bounce between business email, news, and columns or blogs for quite a while before settling in to work.  Franklin also builds a decrescendo into the day, using the evening to converse, divert himself, reflect on his day.  Taking stock of plans and achievements at either end of the day keep him honest.  As always, Franklin's plans for a productive and industrious life are formed on a human scale.

I'll need to shift his start and end times quite a bit, however, since I've always been most productive in the afternoon, evening, and (unfortunately) night, and so I need to go later than he does.  (By the end of every large-scale writing project I've ever undertaken, I am getting up at 10 or 11 am and working until 2 or 3 in the morning.)  Cheap electric light will make this a frugal shift.  I need more sleep than Franklin seems to have, and since I live in the age of cars and labor-saving technologies (oh, how he would have loved our technologies), I need to build exercise for me and my beagle into the day as well.

In short, I am becoming my own boss, setting my schedule and the tasks to be performed therein.  As Father Abraham advised in my last entry, I will work to avoid the shame of being caught idle – by myself.

My technical advisor has let me know we need an additional day for the chart: more to follow.