Printable Chart or App? How to Track Franklin's 13 Virtues

We make both a free printable worksheet and a free app for tracking Franklin's 13 virtues, so we genuinely don't have a side to pick here. What we do have is a clear sense of when each one actually gets used versus abandoned — which matters more than which one is "better" in the abstract.

Key Takeaways

• Paper wins when you have a fixed, visible spot for it — a desk, a mirror, a notebook you already carry
• An app wins when your phone is the thing you check without needing a reminder
• Only an app can prompt you on schedule — paper depends entirely on your own memory
• The underlying method is identical either way: one virtue in focus, a mark per fault, a weekly review
• Plenty of people reasonably use both for different parts of the system

The Case for Paper

A printed page has one advantage no app can fully replicate: ambient visibility. Taped above a desk or sitting on a nightstand, it's a passive reminder every time you walk past — no notification permission, no app to open, nothing competing for your attention the way a phone screen does.

It's also the more faithful recreation of what Franklin actually used, which matters if part of the appeal is the historical exercise itself, not just the habit outcome. See our guide to building the original chart for the exact mechanics.

The honest downside: paper only works if you actually look at it. A tracker in a drawer is functionally identical to no tracker at all.

The Case for the App

An app's real advantage isn't convenience for its own sake — it's that it can initiate contact with you. A morning notification asking "What good shall I do this day?" happens whether or not you remembered to look at anything. That's a fundamentally different mechanism than a printed page waiting to be noticed.

It also removes the redrawing problem entirely — no printing a fresh tracker each week, no running out of copies, and the weekly review (arguably the most important part of the whole system) can be built directly into the schedule instead of relying on you to remember it's Sunday.

The Ben Franklin Virtues app runs Franklin's exact method — one virtue in focus, morning and evening prompts, the full 13-virtue grid, and a built-in weekly review — free on the App Store.

What Actually Determines Which Wins

Not which tool is objectively superior — which one survives contact with your actual week. Two honest questions settle it:

• Do you have a fixed spot a printed page would live — somewhere you look every day without being told to? If yes, paper can work.
• Is your phone the one thing you check reliably, notification or not? If yes, the app will outlast the paper version.

If you're not sure, there's no rule against trying both — start with the free printable worksheet this week, and the app the next, and keep whichever one you actually opened.