Self Help Worksheets
“The advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary…” – Benjamin Franklin.
Save a copy to your Google Docs using the links below.
Virtues Journal
Adopting Benjamin Franklin’s 13 Virtues as a structured framework for self-improvement offers a powerful, methodical approach to personal growth and goal achievement. By tracking specific traits like Industry, Frugality, and Resolution in a daily journal, an individual transforms abstract moral goals into measurable habits. Franklin’s genius lay in his “one-at-a-time” strategy: focusing on a single virtue each week allowed him to build a foundation of discipline without becoming overwhelmed by the scope of his own imperfections. This practice cultivates self awareness, forcing a person to become an objective observer of their own behavior and progress. Over time, this consistent self-monitoring breeds the integrity and clarity of mind necessary to navigate life’s challenges, ultimately providing the internal stability required to reach long-term professional and personal milestones.
Link to the Virtues Journal
What Good Journal
Franklin’s practice of journaling his day with the questions “What good shall I do this day?” and “What good have I done today?” provides a powerful psychological framework for intentional living. By starting the morning with a productive intention, an individual shifts from a reactive mindset to a proactive one, priming the brain to seek out opportunities for contribution and excellence. The evening examination then serves as a crucial accountability mechanism, forcing a moment of honest reflection that bridges the gap between one’s ideals and their actual behavior. This cycle of morning “goal” and evening “audit” prevents days from slipping away into mindless routine; instead, it fosters a deep sense of purpose and incremental growth. Ultimately, this habit ensures that personal success is not just measured by what one acquires, but by the tangible, positive impact one makes on the world each day.
Link to the What Good & Examination
Personal Mission & Goals
By having a personal mission, you have a north star to guide you in your life. Structuring your self-improvement journey around 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year milestones provides a strategic roadmap that balances immediate action with long-term vision. This tiered approach demonstrates you possess operational discipline—the ability to execute short-term tasks—while maintaining visionary persistence for a decade-long trajectory. By mapping out these intervals, you create a narrative of intentional growth: 1-year goals focus on skill acquisition, 5-year goals emphasize leadership and career pivots, and 10-year milestones define your ultimate legacy or industry impact. This framework effectively signals that you are not merely reacting to life, but are actively auditing your progress, which builds the “narrative arc” essential for persuasive interactions and high-stakes interviews.
Link to Personal Mission Statement & Goals
Habit Tracker
Implementing a habit tracker acts as a bridge between your abstract ambitions and daily execution of transforming goals. You move away from relying on fleeting motivation and toward building compounded discipline. This systematic approach provides a visual feedback loop that reinforces your identity as a high-performer; a habit tracker is tangible proof of your consistency and self-governance, demonstrating that you possess the grit to maintain the small, unglamorous rituals that ultimately drive large-scale success. By quantifying these daily efforts, you transform vague intentions into a measurable data set that mirrors the KPIs used in top-tier business environments. This objective record ensures that your trajectory remains intentional, allowing you to course-correct in real-time before minor lapses become permanent setbacks. A habit tracker prevents “drift” by forcing an honest daily audit of whether your actions actually align with your stated values.
Link to a Customizable Habit Tracker
Daily Schedule Planner
Adopting a daily schedule planner modeled after Benjamin Franklin’s disciplined regimen transforms time from a fleeting resource into a structured asset for professional achievement. By emulating Franklin’s famous “scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours,” which centered on the essential question, “What good shall I do this day?”, you move beyond reactive multitasking and toward intentional, deep-work blocks. This method of time-blocking ensures that high-leverage tasks—such as strategic planning, industry research, or leadership development—are protected from the interruptions of daily life. Furthermore, incorporating Franklin’s practice of a nightly examination allows for an objective audit of one’s productivity and moral alignment, fostering a cycle of continuous refinement. For the aspiring leader, this level of temporal organization signals a sophisticated capacity for self-mastery and the same tireless pursuit of excellence that defined one of history’s most prolific polymaths. The Power of Routine: Franklin assigned a specific time for every activity, which minimized “decision fatigue” throughout the day.
Link to Daily Schedule Planner
Failure Resume
While most professional documents focus on a curated list of wins, a failure resume—a log of every rejected application, botched project, and missed goal—offers a unique competitive advantage by reframing setbacks as data points. By documenting these moments, you strip away the emotional sting of “losing” and instead create a clear map of your own growth and resilience. This practice forces an honest examination on why certain efforts failed, allowing you to identify recurring patterns in your judgment or skill gaps that a standard resume would simply hide. Ultimately, a failure resume builds intellectual humility and psychological safety; it serves as a powerful reminder that success is not a linear path, but a byproduct of the lessons learned through persistent, well-documented trial and error.
Link to Failure Resume