How Benjamin Franklin used Pros and Cons for Decision Making

I’m writing this Hub just prior to January 17^th. Why is this day meaningful? Benjamin Franklin was born on Jan 17, 1706. His life and his writing inspired me to write this article.

Ben Franklin had a lot of great ideas that he implemented. But what I find most fascinating is how his ideas are still very useful today.

I'm going to tell you how he used his idea of Pros and Cons to help make decisions throughout life, especially with his commitment issues. But first, a little about his writing career.

I didn’t realize how much he wrote about his thoughts and ideas until I did the research for this article. If Ben were alive today, we probably would be reading his fine work online as I am sure he would have continued writing the Ben Franklin way, only doing so on the Internet.

Ben was one of several philosophers from the rationalism period. With his inspiration he published many books that can help us all today with many aspects of life. Here are just a few…

• Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack
• Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard's Almanack
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• The Way to Wealth
• Franklin: Writings
• Benjamin Franklin's the Art of Virtue: His Formula for Successful Living

That last one was actually authored by editor George L. Rogers using Ben Franklin’s various writings. But I included it here because Ben was working on a guide for living named "The Art of Virtue." But he never completed it.

By the way, Almanac was spelled with a “k” back then. That’s not a typo. English spelling is a very dynamic thing. We run into trouble with so many things. For example, I could have said “Almanac was spelt with a…etc.”

To say “spelt” is the proper way to say “spelled” in British English. But let me get to my main theme of this hub, which is Franklin’s very worthwhile way of considering Pros and Cons in order to make decisions.

I wonder what the pros and cons are of starting this off with a discussion of Ben’s Authorship? Should I have gotten right to the point sooner? Using Ben’s method of analyzing pros and cons I decided to lead into this with a list of his books. Am I confusing you?

Although Ben had never completed "The Art of Virtue," he was definitely busy writing and successfully completed many other books that I consider self-help books for anyone who likes to acquire more knowledge about ways to improve on their lives.

An easy and quick read is “The Way to Wealth.” You can read it in well under and hour. Ben took his preface from “Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack” and made it into a short 30-page pocket-sized book. That’s what “The Way to Wealth” is. And he was ahead of his time with this book, I can’t get over the fact that the fictitious story he writes about in this book applies directly to our financial crises we have today. Using a fictional storyline, he brings to the surface ideas about the perils of idleness and the dangers of debt.

Why would any author take a small part of one book and use it to publish another tiny reference book? Ben must have considered the pros and cons before he did it. That was his way of handling tough decision-making issues in his life.

Pros and Cons

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You were waiting for this!

Benjamin Franklin used to make lists of pros and cons in order to clearly analyze a situation, resulting in many of his successful endeavors. I learned this from reading his personal letters^[1] that were published by Leonard W. Labaree (editor) in 1956.

It works like this…make a list in two columns. One column contains all the pros and the other contains all the cons. This strategy has two advantages. The first and most striking is the visual observation that one column ends up longer than the other. So you can see that either the pros win over the cons or the other way around. This helps put an end to procrastination, which usually is due to a failure to understand where one is headed. So they do nothing.

The visual clarity helps tremendously with decision-making. But there is another benefit to making this list. When you make the effort to write down all the pros and cons, you are actually forcing your brain to realize all the positive and negative aspects of the decision you are having difficulty with. That gives you the power to move forward and take action in the right direction!
Using this method of analyzing pros and cons may also help with commitment problems. It’s hard to make a commitment to something or to someone when you don’t have a good idea of the pros and cons of the endeavor or the relationship.

Commitment Phobia?

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Did Ben Franklin have commitment issues with getting married? He never officially married, but he had a common-law marriage with Deborah Read and had two children with her. She also had a child from a prior marriage.

The first of the two children they had together, Francis Folger Franklin, died of smallpox. The second, Sarah Franklin, took care of her father in his old age. It was good he had her there. She was a dedicated daughter.

I would not say Ben had a commitment problem. He probably analyzed the pros and cons of leaving the marriage as a common-law marriage.

To him it obviously made no difference. He had a close family and was a decent man with the way he handled all the trials and tribulations of his life, such as with the loss of his first child.

Benjamin Franklin had a very interesting life and there is so much more to this wonderful man. I hope you can put some of his ideas to some good use. Reading his books helps better than some present-day self-help books. He was a genius.

Copyright © 2010 Glenn Stok

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