Ladies and gentlemen, step right up for a glimpse into the life of Benjamin Franklin, the patriarch of punctuality, the sultan of schedules, and yes, quite possibly the grandpa of timetables.

If you thought your life was regimented, wait till you learn more about Benny the Franky’s daily grind – a schedule so tight it makes spandex look loose.

If there was ever a poster boy for over planning, it has to be Franklin. The guy was the founding father of not only America but probably also the timetables we hated at school.

His day began at the crack of dawn. While we’re lost in dreams about not having to go to work, Benny was already up, asking himself, “What good shall I do this day?” Talk about pressure. Here I am, just trying to decide if I have the energy to brush my teeth, and Franklin’s already interrogating himself.

Post his morning interrogation with himself, he’d sit down and pondering over the existential dread of uncompleted to-do lists.

Then, as the sun set, Benny would question himself again, “What good have I done today?” It’s like having a boss that lives inside your head—24/7 performance reviews by your own conscience.

He turned each day into a masterpiece of efficiency, a schedule so refined it makes our modern calendars look like the wild creations of procrastinators.

He even meticulously scheduled his entertainment time as if he were planning a corporate merger.

Here are some of Benny Boy’s beautiful and profound guilt provoking quotes.

“Be always ashamed to catch thyself idle.”

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

“You may delay, but time will not.”

“Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful.”

“If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to a purpose”

“If you were a servant, would you not be ashamed that a good master should catch you idle?”

That’s right, folks—feeling guilty about enjoying that second cup of coffee? Benny Boy Franky’s ghost is hovering over you

According to Benny, time is that friend who arrives at the party early and judges you for every minute you’re late.

 Hats off to you, Benny! Thanks for setting your standards so high, we need a telescope just to see them.

Who needs spontaneity and leisure when you can conquer the world one ticked checkbox at a time?

Here’s a juicy tidbit though that might ruffle the feathers of every time-management guru out there: Franklin’s ground-shaking, earth-shattering inventions didn’t really take off until he actually—gasp—slowed down a bit.

That’s right, folks! All those life-altering inventions like the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove? They didn’t come from Benny frantically running around like a headless chicken. No, they came when he finally put his feet up and took a breather!

And how did our venerable overachiever manage to find this mythical thing called ‘free time’? Well, it turns out he had to offload the daily grind of his businesses to someone else. Yep, the moment Benny handed over the keys to the print shop and said, “You deal with this, I’m off to play with electricity and bifocals,” that’s when the magic happened.

Here is Benny in his own words, while writing to a friend – “I am in a fair way of having no other tasks than such as I shall like to give myself, and of enjoying what I look upon as a great happiness, leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large . . . on such points as may produce something for the common benefit of mankind, uninterrupted by the little cares and fatigues of business.”

Imagine that—Franklin, the poster boy for productivity, finding his eureka moments not in the daily hustle but in the sweet solitude of his own thoughts.

Who knew that stepping back and letting someone else handle the nitty-gritty could lead to such brilliance? It’s almost as if—and brace yourself for this wild idea—being perpetually busy isn’t the key to genius!

So, while we’ve all been sold this dream that to be like Franklin we need to micromanage every second of our waking lives, it turns out Benny himself needed to ditch his own rulebook to truly shine.

Maybe there’s a lesson in there for all of us. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not about filling every moment with tasks but about finding the space between them to let our minds wander to the next big thing.

Here is another reason to avoid being perpetually busy – The BUSIER you are, the faster it will feel that time passed you by. I have certainly found it to be true in my case from the years 2011 to almost 2023.

This was the time that I have worked my absolute hardest, only to realize that most of the things I worked super hard for didn’t materialize in the way they wanted and the often the things I didn’t focus on too much calmly on (or not at all) materialized as if they were magic. 

Yet, it seems the that these 12 years passed by as if they were nothing.

Now the opposite is true as well. If you have nothing to do, it will seem as if days go on for eternity, which is another dread in itself.

So, as always, my solution for this would be the middle way, the path of moderation, where you work and relax appropriately throughout your life.

Neither ascetism nor gluttony made the Buddha enlightened, what made him enlightened was the middle way or the path of moderation.

Don’t feel guilty of the days you waste on doing things you enjoy. Feel fearful of the decades you waste on doing the things you hate.

 “If work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the laziest. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.” – Nikola Tesla