The Morning and Evening Routine Template That Actually Sticks

Search "morning and evening routine template" and you'll find routines with ten, twelve, sometimes fifteen steps—cold plunges, gratitude lists, journaling, stretching, supplements, all before you've had coffee. Most people who try one of these follow it for about four days.

Benjamin Franklin's version had two moving parts: one question in the morning, one at night. It outlasted almost every elaborate routine built since, because it was built to survive a bad day.

Key Takeaways

• Elaborate routines usually fail because any missed step feels like a failed day
• Franklin's template: one question to open the day, one to close it
• Morning: "What good shall I do this day?"
• Evening: "What good have I done today?"
• Add complexity later, slowly—only after the simple version is automatic

Why Most Routine Templates Fail

Every extra step in a routine is another point of failure. A 12-step morning routine doesn't need one thing to go wrong to break—it needs you to be five minutes late, or the kids to wake up early, or a bad night's sleep. Complexity is fragile. Franklin's full daily schedule was actually quite structured, but the two anchor questions at either end were the part that never depended on the rest of the day going right.

The Template: One Question Per End of Day

Morning: "What good shall I do this day?"
Evening: "What good have I done today?"

That's the entire template. We cover the reasoning behind each question in more depth in our piece on daily reflection journaling—here, the focus is just on using it as a routine, not a journal.

The Morning Slot

Before checking your phone, answer the question—out loud, in your head, or written down, whichever you'll actually do. It takes under a minute and gives you one sentence to measure the day against before anyone else's agenda gets to you first.

The Evening Slot

Before bed, answer the second question honestly, even on an unremarkable day. This is the accountability half—not a to-do-list recap, but a genuine check on whether the day matched the intention you set that morning.

Optional Additions (Add Slowly)

Once the two-question version is automatic—usually a few weeks—you can layer in more, one piece at a time:

• A single virtue focus for the week (see our habit tracking method)
• A short reading or study block, as Franklin did each morning
• Planning tomorrow's priorities during the evening slot

Add one thing, keep it for two weeks, then decide whether it earned its place. Anything that survives that test is worth keeping; anything you keep skipping should go.

Building Your Version Today

Tonight, before bed, answer: "What good have I done today?" Tomorrow morning, before your phone, answer: "What good shall I do this day?" That's the whole template—you can start it tonight, not next Monday.

Our Ben Franklin Virtues app delivers both prompts automatically at the right times, so the template doesn't depend on you remembering it every single day.