God bless Ben Franklin.
Yeah, he was serial philanderer
who never actually married his “wife”, had a kid out of wedlock and a dame in
every port. But he also invented practically everything (including the idea of
America), wrote that great essay about why older women make the best lovers,
and was the first of the modern self-development gurus.
In his autobiography, Franklin
describes a self-improvement project where he listed 13 “virtues” (including
moderation, temperance, order, and frugality) and determined that he would
create a chart to track his daily adherence to those virtues. In his
estimation, if he really focused on one of these every week for 13 weeks, them
went back to the top and started again, he’d eventually get really good at
being virtuous and become the perfect man.
Of course, he quickly found a
problem that more recent studies on willpower have better explained: it seemed
like he could never get a grip on all 13 at once. When he was really “on”
silence and industry, he found that sincerity and justice didn’t get done.
That’s because willpower isn’t like a muscle that gets strengthened through more
use, as we’ve been taught; it’s a muscle that wears out as we’re forced to use
it during the day, which is why HABIT—doing things automatically without having to use up
willpower—becomes so important.
Nonetheless, I’ve found that the
chart system works nicely for me in cases where I need to do something every
day in order to get the result I want, so I created this one for my #100DaysofHealth:
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100
Days of Health
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8
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9
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10
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11
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12
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13
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14
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Did
I eat food, not too much, mostly plants?
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Did
I work out 1 hour?
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Did
I wear sunscreen?
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Did
a brush 2x?
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Did
I floss once?
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Did
I do my eye exercises?
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Did
I practice gratitude?
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Did
I meditate at least 20 minutes?
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Was
I happy at least 1x?
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Did
I avoid indulging the monkey mind?
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Did
I stimulate my brain with something new/challenging?
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Did
I completely avoid simple carbs? (30 day challenge)
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Did
I completely avoid alcohol? (30 day challenge)
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Weight
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Each day, I simply fill out “yes”, “no”, and possibly a note
(“Yes, walked for 1 hour”) in each box.
In my first 7 days, I had some wins and losses:
- I lost 4 pounds
- I worked out for an hour 5 days out of 7
- I did completely avoid carbs and alcohol
- I did eat a lot of plants, and when it wasn’t plants, it was fish or poultry. I had red meat only once, and it was smoked at my friend Ed’s house, and it was DELICIOUS.
- I went to the annual Taste of Cincinnati festival on Memorial day, which is usually a binge-fest for me, and actually stopped eating when I was full
- I got an accountability partner, and another acquaintance invited me to join a “bootcamp” at my gym that I’ve attended twice and really enjoyed, despite being in major pain the next day.
On the not-so-great side:
- Day 4 was TOUGH—I was in a crappy mood and had no energy; I believe the culmination of the cold turkey removal of sugar and white flour from my diet.
- I have a REALLY hard time remembering to brush my teeth before bed. Yeah, stupid, but it’s not a habit I’ve ever gotten into and it’s one my dentist says I need to if I want to keep my teeth.
- I’ve been bad about doing something every day to stimulate my brain—which is apparently an important Alzheimer’s preventative per a study I read about recently and will talk about at some point
- I meditated for the prescribed 20 minutes only twice (but then again, it was after I re-committed to it)
Ben would recognize the problem with so many goals, but it's really all one goal: be able to survive th zombie invasion. At 125. In any case, I’ll do better next week.
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