13 Virtues

Build lasting character one virtue at a time.

A 90-second daily practice based on Benjamin Franklin’s 1726 method. One virtue per week. Mark your faults — not your streaks. After thirteen weeks, your ledger reveals which weaknesses keep returning, and which ones quietly disappear.

13 Virtues is a self-improvement app built on Benjamin Franklin’s 1726 method, modernized for 2026. Ninety seconds a day, for people who have quit every habit tracker. Each virtue has been renamed and given self-check questions written for the world we actually live in.

Three questions. Answer honestly.

You’re not lacking discipline. You’re lacking a structure to confront the same fault, week after week, until you see it clearly.

The reason streaks fail is the reason faults work.

Streak apps reward you for not failing. Miss one day and the count resets — the punishment for being human. So the day you slip is also the day you delete the app.

Franklin’s method does the opposite. The slip is the data. You mark the fault, you keep the ledger, and at the end of the week the page itself shows you which weakness keeps returning. Nothing resets. Nothing is lost.

“I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them diminish.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Old name, modern practice.

Franklin’s thirteen virtues survived three centuries because the precepts beneath them are timeless. The names and the temptations they confront are not. Each virtue has been renamed for 2026 and given self-check questions written for the world we actually live in.

Self-check questions written for compulsive scrolling, not just compulsive eating. 65 questions across 13 virtues — five per virtue.

How It Works

Three steps. One thirteen-week cycle. A clearer picture of who you actually are.

  1. Focus on One Virtue — One virtue per week. Thirteen virtues, thirteen weeks, one complete cycle of intentional focus.
  2. Mark Your Faults — Every slip gets a dot. A clean page means a perfect day. Honest ink on paper — the way Franklin marked his own faults in 1726.
  3. See the Patterns — After a full cycle, your ledger reveals which faults keep recurring — and which ones quietly disappear.

13 weeks per cycle · 4 cycles per year · Repetition reveals what one week cannot

Try the Ledger

Tap a box to mark a fault. Tap a dot to remove it. That’s it. Now imagine doing this for one virtue, every day, for one week. The 13 Virtues ledger is a digital recreation of Franklin’s original moral checklist, designed for daily use on any device.

Built by someone who broke every streak first.

I tried Seinfeld’s “Don’t Break the Chain” for years — pen and paper at first, then Loop Habit Tracker — with little to show for it. Then I found Franklin’s method on The Art of Manliness, and the math of it stuck: thirteen virtues, one a week, four cycles a year — fifty-two weeks accounted for. So I built the version I wanted to use — Franklin’s structure, modernized: reminders that actually arrive, weekly reflections that go deeper than the daily check, and a history that doesn’t reset on a missed day. Two months in, I’m not bad on a few virtues. I’m worse than I thought on others. Both are useful to know.

— Julien, Founder

Become a Practitioner.

Lifetime access to the daily practice. One purchase. No subscription. No expiration.

Introductory price for the first 100 Practitioners. Currently at 3 — rises to $79 at 100.

Practitioner — $49

One purchase. Lifetime access. 30-day money-back guarantee.

Every Practitioner gets:

Honest answers.

I’ve tried habit trackers and quit. Why is this different?

Streak apps reward you for not failing. The day you slip is the day they punish you. This app does the opposite — the slip is the data. Nothing resets. What you’d normally delete in frustration becomes your most useful page.

How long does it take each day?

Ninety seconds a day, split between morning and evening. A morning prompt sets your intention — about forty-five seconds. The evening prompt asks whether you held to it, then prompts a brief reflection — another forty-five. Anything more is voluntary.

Is there a mobile app?

Yes — and you don’t need an app store. 13 Virtues installs directly to your iPhone or Android home screen with two taps from your browser: open the share menu, tap “Add to Home Screen”. From then on it opens like a native app — works offline, sends evening reminders, and lives in your pocket. The same install works on desktop. No App Store, no Play Store, no download.

Why pay once instead of subscribing?

Because this is a tool, not a service. You wouldn’t subscribe to a notebook. One purchase, lifetime access, no renewals. The introductory price holds for the first 100 Practitioners; afterwards it rises to $79.

What if it doesn’t work for me?

Thirty-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. Send one email and we refund the full amount. If the practice doesn’t take hold within a month, we don’t deserve the purchase.

What if you go out of business?

A fair question. Your data is yours. You can export your full ledger to CSV anytime — past, present, and future cycles. Even if 13 Virtues stops existing tomorrow, your record survives. If we ever shut down or stop being maintained, the source code goes public. Practitioners will have a self-hostable version that can run forever, with no dependency on me. And for what it’s worth: I built this for myself. I’m committed to maintaining it for at least five years, no matter what. — Julien

Is this the original 1726 list, or have you changed it?

Both. The structure is Franklin’s: thirteen virtues, one per week, four cycles per year. The names and the self-check questions have been modernized. Temperance becomes Vitality; Silence becomes Thoughtful Communication; Industry becomes Productive Use of Time. The questions cover compulsive scrolling, performative kindness, and other temptations Franklin didn’t anticipate. The precepts beneath are unchanged.

Is this religious?

No. Franklin was famously skeptical of dogma. The thirteen virtues are practical: order, frugality, sincerity, industry. The method is moral self-examination, not prayer.

What if I miss a week?

The cycle is forgiving. Miss a week, mark the gap, move to the next virtue. The thirteen-week structure assumes you’re human — that’s the point of running it four times a year.

How is this different from Atomic Habits or The 7 Habits?

Those books teach a method. This app delivers the daily ritual the method requires. You can read all three books and still not have a system you’ll open every evening. You can use this app having read none of them.

What if my faults overwhelm me?

Then you’re using the system correctly. Franklin himself wrote that he was “surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined.” The point is to see them clearly, one virtue at a time. The page handles the load — you only handle one virtue per week.

The first virtue is starting.

Become a Practitioner today for $49. No subscription, no renewal, no expiration. Cancel within 30 days for a full refund. The ledger is waiting.

Become a Practitioner — $49

Or take the 90-second quiz first

30-day money-back guarantee · The Modern Virtue Guide PDF is yours regardless.