Benjamin Franklin planned his day in a little book he began in 1733: rise at 5 AM and ask “What good shall I do this day?”, work 8 AM to noon and 2 PM to 6 PM, read and dine from noon to 2 PM, review the day in the evening and sleep at 10 PM. He admitted he never fully kept it.
Key takeaways
- Franklin’s timetable, printed in Part Two of his Autobiography, gives seven hours to sleep (10 PM to 5 AM) and eight hours to work, in two four-hour blocks.
- Each end of his day carried a question: “What good shall I do this day?” at 5 AM and “What good have I done to-day?” in the evening.
- His noon ran two hours, for reading, his accounts and dinner, which was the main meal of his day.
- Franklin wrote that Order was the virtue that gave him the most trouble, and he kept the plan only in part.
- The parts worth borrowing are a steady wake time, daylight soon after it, a fixed bedtime and a short evening review, set to your own Body Clock Type.
What was Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule?
Franklin’s schedule was a one-page timetable that ran from a 5 AM start to a 10 PM bedtime, with two four-hour work blocks in between. It survives in his Autobiography, where he called it a “scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours of a natural day.” It belonged to a little book of virtues that the editor’s note dates to July 1, 1733, when Franklin was a 27-year-old printer in Philadelphia. He copied the page into Part Two of the Autobiography, which he wrote at Passy, near Paris, in 1784.
The page divides the day into parts, with a question at each end:
- The Morning, 5 AM to 8 AM. Question: What good shall I do this day? Rise, wash and say a short prayer; “contrive day’s business, and take the resolution of the day”; continue his present study; breakfast.
- Work, 8 AM to 12 PM.
- Noon, 12 PM to 2 PM. “Read, or overlook my accounts, and dine.”
- Work, 2 PM to 6 PM.
- Evening, 6 PM to 10 PM. Question: What good have I done to-day? “Put things in their places,” then supper, “music or diversion, or conversation,” and an “examination of the day.”
- Night, 10 PM to 5 AM. Sleep.
Add it up and you get seven hours of sleep, eight hours of work, and a protected hour or more at each end of the day for planning and review.
What did Franklin do in the morning?
Franklin gave himself three hours before work, and he opened them with a question, not a task. Before work began at 8 AM, the plan left time to wash, say a short prayer, plan the day’s business, settle on a resolution for the day, study and eat breakfast. He decided what the day was for before the day started making demands.
Early rising runs through his writing. Poor Richard, the almanac Franklin printed under the pen name Richard Saunders, carried the familiar proverb that early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise in its 1735 edition. Franklin was candid that Poor Richard’s proverbs “contained the wisdom of many ages and nations,” so read it as a saying he spread, not one he necessarily coined. Decades later, in a 1768 letter from London, he wrote that he rose early almost every morning and sat in his room for half an hour or an hour, reading or writing, as a kind of bath in cold air.
How did Franklin divide his working day?
Franklin worked two four-hour blocks, 8 AM to noon and 2 PM to 6 PM, around a two-hour noon. He ran his own printing house in the 1730s, and his noon was not idle: “Read, or overlook my accounts, and dine.” Dinner was the midday meal in his plan; supper came in the evening.
His first years in business had been far less tidy. In the Autobiography he recalls setting a sheet of type a day for a Quaker history while launching his shop, and it was “often eleven at night, and sometimes later” before he finished. A local doctor told the merchants’ club that he saw Franklin “still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed.” Set beside that, the 1733 scheme reads like a correction: work ends at 6 PM, and sleep starts at 10 PM.
How did Franklin end his day?
Franklin ended his day with tidying, supper and company, then a short review of how the day had gone before a 10 PM bedtime. The evening question mirrors the morning one: What good have I done to-day? After work came putting things away, supper, then music, diversion or conversation, and, before bed at 10, an “examination of the day.”
The examination had its own tool. Franklin gave each of his thirteen virtues a page, ruled in red ink into seven columns for the days of the week, and marked each fault with “a little black spot.” He credited the habit of a daily review to the Golden Verses attributed to Pythagoras.
Did Franklin actually keep his schedule?
Only in part, and he said so plainly. “My scheme of Order gave me the most trouble,” he wrote. It might suit a journeyman printer who controlled his own time, he decided, but not a master “who must mix with the world, and often receive people of business at their own hours.” He called himself “incorrigible with respect to Order.”
He kept up the daily examination “with occasional intermissions,” then one course a year, then one every several years, then not at all, though he “always carried my little book” with him. His verdict at 78 was still warm: he fell far short of the perfection he wanted, but he believed he was “a better and a happier man” for trying.
In 1784, the same year he wrote up the scheme, Franklin poked fun at late nights in an anonymous letter to the Journal de Paris. Its narrator goes to bed three or four hours after midnight, wakes by accident at six and is astonished to find his room full of sunlight. The satire proposes taxing window shutters, rationing candles and ringing church bells at sunrise to rouse the sluggards. It asked Parisians to change their habits, not their clocks.
What can Franklin’s routine teach your body clock?
Three parts of Franklin’s scheme line up with how your body clock works, and none of them needs a 5 AM alarm. Your master clock is a group of nerve cells in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It runs on a roughly 24-hour cycle, and light and dark have the biggest influence on it, according to the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
- A steady wake time, then light. Franklin’s fixed 5 AM start put him up with the sun in midsummer and ahead of it in winter, when mornings ran on candlelight. You don’t need his hour. You need one wake time you can keep and daylight soon after it. Read more on how light sets your rhythm.
- A fixed bedtime with a buffer. His plan closed work at 6 PM and left four hours for tidying, supper, music and conversation before a 10 PM sleep. Ending work well before bed gives the evening a clear shape, and a bedtime at the same hour gives your body clock the same signal every night.
- Two questions, morning and evening. A plan at the start and a review at the end turn a day into a loop you can adjust the next day. Shared meals and conversation at regular hours are part of what researchers call social rhythm. See the research on social rhythms.
His hours suited a printer in the 1730s. Yours depend on your Body Clock Type: a 5 AM start that suits a Morning Glory may not suit a Moonflower. Read about chronotypes and why they matter.
Your day on My BodyClock
The day above on My BodyClock shows Franklin’s scheme as he wrote it: sleep from 10 PM to 5 AM; a morning of washing, his morning question, planning and study, with breakfast at 7:30 AM; work from 8 AM to 12 PM; reading, accounts and dinner from noon to 2 PM; work again from 2 PM to 6 PM; then tidying, supper, music or conversation and, before bed, the examination of the day (we place it at 9 PM; his table gives it no separate hour). The hours are his. The splits inside his morning, his noon and his evening are our estimates. In the animation, each block’s Photo Note takes the center while it runs: a washstand at dawn, a red-ruled notebook, a wooden printing press, a candle beside the evening review.
Build your own version in Owaves, the World’s First Wellness Planner, Powered by Your Body Clock. Download it on the App Store, join the Android waitlist, and take the Body Clock Type quiz to find the wake time that fits you. Then plan your ideal day with a question at each end, and give sleep the fixed place Franklin gave it.
FAQ
What time did Benjamin Franklin wake up?
His 1733 scheme sets 5 AM for rising and 10 PM for sleep. He admitted he did not keep it exactly, especially once he had a business to run and visitors who came at their own hours.
What were Franklin’s two daily questions?
“What good shall I do this day?” in the morning and “What good have I done to-day?” in the evening. Both head the timetable in his Autobiography.
Did Franklin really follow his schedule?
Only partly. He wrote that his scheme of Order gave him the most trouble and called himself incorrigible about it, though he believed the attempt made him better and happier.
Did Franklin invent the saying about early to bed and early to rise?
No. The proverb appears in Poor Richard for 1735, which Franklin wrote and printed, but he described the almanac’s proverbs as the gathered wisdom of many ages and nations. He spread the saying more than he invented it.
Do I need to wake up at 5 AM to follow his routine?
No. The useful parts are a steady wake time, light soon after waking, a fixed bedtime and a short review each evening. Choose hours that fit your Body Clock Type.
Sources
- Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (Henry Holt and Company, 1916), Part Two, written at Passy, 1784. Project Gutenberg eBook #20203, public domain. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20203
- “Poor Richard, 1735.” Founders Online, US National Archives; from The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 2. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0001
- “Aux Auteurs du Journal de Paris, [before 31 March 1784],” printed in the Journal de Paris, April 26, 1784. Founders Online, US National Archives; from The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 42. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-42-02-0063
- “Benjamin Franklin to Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, 28 July 1768.” Founders Online, US National Archives; from The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 15. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-15-02-0098
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH), “Circadian Rhythms” fact sheet, updated May 20, 2025. https://nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms
Photos: AI illustration (Nano Banana 2) · AI image (Nano Banana 2)