The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

by Jonathan Haidt

He then printed a table made up of seven columns (one for each day of the week) and thirteen rows (one for each virtue), and he put a black spot in the appropriate square each time he failed to live a whole day in accordance with a particular virtue. He concentrated on only one virtue a week, hoping to keep its row clear of spots while paying no special attention to the other virtues, though he filled in their rows whenever violations occurred. Over thirteen weeks, he worked through the whole table. Then he repeated the process, finding that with repetition the table got less and less spotty. Franklin wrote in his autobiography that, though he fell far short of perfection: “I was, by the endeavor, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”