How did the runaway fugitive Benjamin Franklin become a writer, printer, inventor, philosopher and diplomat and still find time to help found the United States?

Part of the answer is easy: he was a self-made polymath.

That means he trained himself to study and succeed in multiple skills and disciplines with surgical focus.

The key to learning across so many fields?

Habits.

Routine processes and procedures that still work to this day.

In fact, they’re more valuable than ever.

On this page, you’ll learn how Franklin built one of the sharpest minds in all of human history.

Even better:

You’ll learn how you can use the same habits and techniques to learn faster, think deeply, and integrate knowledge across multiple fields.

Let’s dive in.

What Makes Benjamin Franklin a Polymath?

The term “polymath” has been used for hundreds of years to describe a person of various learning.

But we’re not talking about productivity nerds, which is sometimes how the term is now used in our time.

Franklin, like Thomas Jefferson and other polymaths I’ve covered on this website, built expertise in multiple areas through the power of habit.

It’s important to understand this fact because Franklin was not born into privilege. He wasn’t a savant.

But the specific activities he engaged in make him one of the most influential minds of his time. He influences us to this day.

And his learning habits are proof that polymathy isn’t about talent. It’s about practicing the right habits.

Benjamin Franklin’s Most Important Learning Habits

As we get into my discussion of how Franklin learned, you might think that some of the habits I’m describing belong more to the realm of productivity.

Although that might be true, to succeed in everything from science and innovation to politics and diplomacy, Franklin’s biggest habit is the most important of all.

That’s because it creates reflective thinking. And when you have that, you learn from your own habits, enabling personal growth over time as you learn from your own journey.

With that point in mind, here are what I believe are the most important lessons about learning, overcoming obstacles and long-term focus.

One: The Focusing Power of Franklin’s Reading Deadlines

Franklin worked for a time in his brother’s printing shop.

To educate himself, he would quietly borrow books from apprentice booksellers and read them overnight. Then, before anyone noticed, he would return them.

As he wrote about this habit:

“Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.”

This early habit of reading against the clock focused his mind and deepened his memory.

He also chose books written in modern styles, which would influence his communication skills.

But the point is that Benjamin chose to become one of the most well-read minds of his era.

And when he read, he wasn’t just reading. He was training.

I’ve also read against the clock for years and deadlines are indeed powerful. Check out my guide to reading faster for more information.

Two: The Expansive Power of Conversation

Franklin didn’t just read books. He also read people.

That’s because he understood something that many people who want to become polymathic miss:

The right conversation with the right person can teach you more than a hundred books. Faster.

In order to make sure he was having plenty of the right conversations, Benjamin created the Junto in Philadelphia.

This was a weekly discussion group where a variety of tradesmen, writers and thinkers shared ideas.

It was not just a social circle.

Rather, the Junto was a living, breathing social system that allowed its members to learn from one another.

As Jessica Borger recently wrote in a scholarly paper titled The Power of Networking in Science and Academia, networking remains just as important in our time. If not more so.

As Franklin wrote with reference to the importance of relationships:

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.”

Three: Accumulating Knowledge Through Questioning

Franklin wrote a lot and was clearly highly opinionated.

But Walter Isaacson highlights in his excellent biography,  Franklin wrote that knowledge “was obtained by the use of the ear rather than of the tongue.”

To make sure he had plenty to listen to, Franklin stimulated conversation through questions.

If you’d like to emulate the process, check out my full guide on how and why you should question everything.

The key is to understand that Franklin didn’t ask questions to impress others.

He used dialogue to help refine his thinking, uncover new perspectives and help himself and others understand more.

All the reading to deadlines he did surely helped stimulate his curiosity and stockpile a number of questions.

But the deliberate practice of questioning helped make the process automatic, literally forging it into a habit thanks to what scientists call procedural memory.

Make questioning while you meet with people and as you study a habit of mind. It will help you think differently, learn more and experience tremendous growth.

And the best part is that the more you practice asking questions, the better your questioning will become.

Four: Setting Rules and Keeping Them

Just as reading to deadlines focuses the mind and memory, developing codes of conduct frees the mind to pay much more open attention to what you want to learn.

That’s why Benjamin was a fanatic for creating rules.

But he didn’t just create them.

He wrote them out, tested them, enforced them and evolved them over time.

For example, he crafted thirteen rules around a list of virtues. You can find them in his autobiography, specifically the section where he talks about his goal of achieving moral perfection.

But he didn’t stop at self-discipline for himself.

When he formed the Union Fire Company from a group of volunteers, he wrote bylaws. If members broke the rules around attending meetings or taking care of equipment, they paid fines.

Likewise with the Junto. Members followed written rules to help ensure an environment where their mutual focus on learning from one another thrived.

You might think Franklin’s approach is a bit old-fashioned. But in our time, internet companies like stickK enable people to set up commitment contracts. If they don’t achieve goals they’ve set for themselves, the company will send a certain amount of the users money to a charity or other designated party.

Although your mileage may vary from setting rules for yourself, habitually setting up codes of conduct and sticking to them can create a framework for learning.

Personally, I use rules as accelerators for my learning goals often, such as rewarding myself for getting through difficult books I don’t want to read. For example, I won’t let myself get a book for pleasure until I’ve finished one that I’ve committed to completing for my research.

I find that accountability works best when it’s unavoidable, visible and public. That’s one reason I made a video about my in-progress bookshop Memory Palace project.

Although many challenges have made me want to give up along the way, my rule that I finish the projects I start helps me push through. As does making the projects I start public.

Five: Masterful No