Franklin, Churchill, and Being Productive in this weirdness | BRIght & Early, BRI’s Web Series

0:03 hello young people of the Internet welcome back to another episode of bright and early from the team at the Bill of Rights Institute my name is Rachel Davison Humphries I’m director of outreach here at the Institute we’re so glad you’re joining us this week I’m here with my colleagues Kirk and Gary Kirk I was everybody doing it okay you

0:24 know I’m finding myself trying to keep productive exactly and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today so it’s been a little while since we spoke to you and we’ve all been figuring out what work means in our homes and how to organize our lives and we’ve been thinking about what we often think about which is how do we turn to those in history to help

0:45 us think through how to organize ourselves and be better people so first we’re gonna talk a little bit about Ben Franklin so I don’t know how much you know about Ben Franklin already but he was someone he was very interested in developing himself and becoming a better person sometimes successfully sometimes less successfully sometimes the people

1:05 who are most interested in improving themselves are those that recognize that they have the most to improve and so Ben Franklin was this incredibly productive person if you don’t know much about him I mean if they’re full of a person in American history who contributed the most to civil society I’d make a strong argument for Ben Franklin what do you

1:28 think Kirk yeah I think he’s certainly up there and you know I think he’s interesting also in that he was not he was very much a businessman and an inventor first whereas many of the founders wore lots of different hats Franklin was no different he was also a sort of another generation older than a

1:49 lot of the founders as well which is interesting but what I’ve been thinking about Frank a lot because frankly no pun intended I you know structuring my day has become sort of odd I usually have you know an office to go to or I have chores to go do or go outing meeting friends or whatever and that whole world has been kind of disrupted so I don’t

2:10 know about you guys but I’ve really been trying to add structure to my day yeah you know I’ve experienced that – you know there is something about knowing you have to be at a certain place that the structure comes from the outside and I think one of the big things is it’s okay for the structure to come from the inside you know like I’m gonna take exercise as an example doesn’t look like I do it but

2:31 I used to take classes that started and ended at very specific times and kind of was a big part of my day and now you know I’m finding myself still wanting to do it but having to fit it in and so then the whole day has to become something new structure and then I ended up doing that much like Franklin and this is genuinely something I do kind of took a look at what was I already doing

2:53 and where can I kind of fit things in so the reason I knew about that honestly was as a kid one of the great things about Franklin is he has an autobiography you could read the autobiography of Ben Franklin was a really really nice sort of insight into this really brilliant person to do all these things but I would always flip the the park in the book for me that’s broken is the part about structuring

3:13 your day because even as a kid I wanted to do it and we have this really amazing opportunity right now in our lives to kind of think about what structure means for us like what is structuring our day look like and so people have been using Franklin from first cent for more than a century to think about how to structure

3:35 their days even as recently as you know the modern era the Lifehacker website shows some of his best productivity hacks and really dives a little bit into how he thought about his day he gave himself lists of things he wanted to improve whether those were the virtues he wanted to exhibit or the the

3:56 way he wanted to structure his day and what’s the opportunity that exists right now for all of you is that there’s very few outside pressures on how to structure your day I mean one of the things that we as look is that you know kids getting up at 6 o’clock in the morning is not always the best thing for

4:18 teenagers right so what does it look like when you are able to structure your own day for how you get your work done a lot of schools are experimenting with online education and young people to only come at certain times of the week so the question is how do you create the discipline in yourself to get the things done that you need to

4:42 and so this is again another great website called brain pickings it’s a fun one to poke around in if you’ve never never been to it but they have this wonderful visual diagram of famous authors and when they chose to wake up and how productive they were and you can see from all these different authors Edith Wharton Kurt Vonnegut Roger Ebert Goethe Dickens Darwin there was no one

5:06 way to do this for this famous authors it’s about what works for you and we have this opportunity which doesn’t come along and like very often to really take stock and think about what’s important and think about how we want to arrange ourselves and our and our days and that’s all happening because we’re in

5:26 this moment that you know can be a little stressful and can feel a little isolated and one of the ways that we’ve often dealt with isolation as societies is we’ve turned inward to find what our strengths are and so Kirk has been thinking a bit about sometimes in history when we’re isolated or when

5:47 different groups have been isolated and so he’s gonna talk to us a little bit about Winston Churchill yeah so thanks Rach I was thinking about you know how it is that that we experience these sort of historical events and you know Franklin was very much someone who was who was very much conscious that he was

6:08 a historical figure and I think part of his process there is working to improve himself in certain ways and then tracking that over time which is interesting Churchill had some quirks a lot of quirks he’s a very interesting person if you’ve never heard about him but I was thinking about Churchill because Churchill was became the Prime Minister of Britain at a time of crisis

6:30 in in 1940 and he had for years been warning about this Nazi menace throughout the 1930s and then in 1940 you know he finds himself in the scene of our and France was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 10th of 1940s when Germany launched their invasion and France at the time was the most powerful

6:52 army in the world they were the largest army of the world they were a force to be reckoned with and by June that whole country had been nearly overrun in the British had their backs against the English Channel and were therefore sovereign Restless town called Dunkirk which is in Belgium and Churchill put a call out to the people

7:12 of Britain to help evacuate over a thousand ships went across the English Channel to ferry back and forth men and munitions and materiel to get him off the beach and that started on May 26 that began that that evacuation and by June 4th that had been completed and so Churchill wanted to communicate to the nation what had happened and how and

7:34 reassure them of what was going on much like our leaders are doing today getting getting in front of us and like we talked about before with Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression and so he gives his amazing speech on June 4th and he does a few things I think it’s interesting for us to sort of put on our historian Hansen think about what he’s doing in this speech so not only what is he communicating but that

7:56 context is really important and then the tools he uses in the speech are really interesting to me and there’s something that I’ve been sort of listening to with different public leaders as well and so I’ll read a couple things from Churchill and then I’ll maybe compare those a little bit so one of the things he does that I love about Churchill is he’s he’s very upfront about what’s taking place he’s not trying to hide anything

8:18 you know they just evacuated three hundred and thirty thousand men off the beaches of Dunkirk but he says we must be very careful not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory wars are not won by evacuations right so he’s not saying hey why isn’t this amazing look at this we pulled off this incredible thing by saying hey let’s

8:39 hold our horses here you know this wasn’t you know totally about just us and then he also does something where he puts the audience in the center of it I mean his concluding paragraph is beautiful he says I have myself full confidence that if all do their duty if nothing is neglected and if the best arrangements are made as they’re being made we shall prove

9:00 ourselves once again able to defend our Island home to ride out the storm of war and to outlive the Menace of tyranny if necessary for years if necessary alone I was thinking about that today Larry Hogan who’s the Maryland Governor gave an address ordering individuals to stay at home during this pandemic and he said that

9:21 every Marylander has an opportunity to be a hero in and of themselves right and it’s interesting the way there are political leaders positioned us as a part of the narrative that’s taking place particularly in self-government or situations where self-government occurs but that we are all a part of this too and that we all can contribute on what are the ways is like we’re done by

9:42 structuring our day but another way is you know in in volunteering and in giving back to our communities which is important in here Churchill was calling on the people to have results right and it may took resolve I think from his clear visioning and clear desire to continue to carry on the fight and defend themselves against Nazi tyranny

10:03 which by this point they were alone in the world almost facing off against his threat so anyway fun little detour but I encourage all of you to look at Churchill’s speech from June 4th and and just to see how it is that he’s playing with the audience how he’s how he’s addressing his eyes who he’s talking to and in what ways of he’s using that to really coalesce his message and the

10:24 other way too is how he’s positioning that struggle with didn’t sort of the overall struggle of British history I think is all really interesting and those three those three aspects of rhetoric right you have the logic you have the ethos thing of the pathos the great leaders are really and the great orator is the great speech makers know how to use each of those levers in

10:47 really particular ways and so as we’re thinking about how we’re communicating with our family and friends how we’re providing solace and consolation how we’re supporting those that need support thinking about those three different leaders how are we using the arguments and the logic how are we using our

11:07 emotional appeal and how are we using what we bring to the table as an individual in those conversations is a really powerful thing to be aware of it’s sometimes hard to be aware of it in the moment though so there are these tools that you can use to help you do that there’s a fancy word for it called meta cognitive processing

11:29 that’s I’m just gonna call it thinking about what you said or did and one of the things so my colleague Gary it has been with the Bill of Rights Institute over a year now one of the things that I might greatly about Gary is Gary knows how to create systems and habits better than anyone else that I know and so he’s

11:49 been doing it for a long time and testing out different theories about how to create a better self so Gary tell us what your to get and talk to us about say oh you’re being very nice out there but but thanks yeah no everything we’re discussing today really connects in my mind you know you talk about systems and I think yeah that’s the first thing that happens right after this I’m gonna jot

12:10 down in my journal these ideas that we talked about because I think that’s one of those systems right so you’re just talking about the the combination of thinking about thinking right I like to think of it in terms of reflection right that that word of you’re living through something how can you reflect back what’s

12:31 happening but also when Kirk was talking I was thinking about you know the power of reaching others through what you say and through what you write but history itself off to is reaching across time to you as students out there you might have this impulse to want to connect to other people and you’re probably doing it in some way I’m but connecting with

12:51 yourself is interesting leave this yourself of tomorrow and that’s why I think journaling is really interesting right so who knows better than you what your experience is right now nobody right your lived experience isn’t something it’s not a test answer that you can get right or wrong it’s your lived experience and so being able to

13:13 reflect and I think the most powerful way is to write it down in some journal get a special one right now you know if you don’t already have one part of the really practical thing that’s important is even though if you’re not in classes right now you in classes you may be really used to taking notes or that kind of thing you still at some point may

13:35 want to have some hard answer to the thoughts that you’ve had it might even come up soon enough if some schools are going back to classes virtually you might be asked over the course of a week to think what did you think what did you what did you experience and so if you are journaling you’ll have those things to be able to share with others and yourself in the future um I think my

13:57 advice for that is is a systemic thing you got to give yourself really three things you have to give yourself some place to write write but you also have to give yourself time I find that having even a set time per day is a really nice time to do it I’m gonna steal from another resource you’ve talked about resources I don’t know if you’re

14:18 familiar with the artists way but Julia Cameron yeah artists way is great and in that she’s mentions a phrase that can be life-changing which is morning pages right as soon as you wake up if you have your journal right by you’re right by your desk wherever you’re sleeping spend some time and give yourself say 10 minutes for 10 minutes I’m just gonna write

14:38 what’s going on you’ll be surprised how powerful that is and then the third thing aspect of that is the thinking of other people you mentioned before self-discipline is part of the structure of the day we talked about self-governance a lot that can be lots of things self-governance could be societal it could be national but it can also be personal and so I think having

14:59 some sort of structure for yourself even if it’s tiny is so powerful not only to reach inward and reflect but to reach outward to others and to reach through time it’s a pretty magical thing and I think one of the things that we you know in modern times we think a little bit of our social media as our kind of archive

15:20 of our lives what we posted on Instagram or what we posted on tik-tok or what we posted on Facebook for those of us that are slightly older it’s read old books become becomes what we how we think about how we archive our lives what journaling does is journaling is

15:41 not outward facing but inward facing right we’re selective in what we choose to put on social media because we’re we’re not you know everyone has a private life and that private life is sometimes very different sometimes not so different depending on on how you’re doing and and what’s going on in the

16:01 world but what journaling allows you to do is is really be in touch with that private life and especially where things are really tumultuous and really uh none stay or seem very unstable what journaling can do is help you just get it out of your head right and that’s what Julia Cameron in artist way talks about the morning pages she says that

16:22 it’s more if you’re not familiar artists way as a creativity course that’s been extraordinarily successful for decades and it’s based on a book and she has you run through a series of exercises so if you’re all interested in creativity highly recommend this course that you can run through yourself but one of the things that we think about is that we all have these blockages and those

16:43 blockages exacerbate in times of frustration or times of times of tension and so she says get the pages do them first thing in the morning first thing when you get up and you’ll get you’ll get all that out of your head and so what that ends up doing is giving you all these creative ideas for how you can

17:04 go about your day because you’re getting over all these blocks really really early in the day and so whether that’s getting your work done in a timely manner whatever that work may be or being creative about how you can support your community journaling can help you start with that kind of creative moment and then that propels you forward

17:24 throughout the rest of the day so that’s almost all the time we have for our session for our episode today this is the Bill of Rights Institute right and early I want to leave you with a couple more activities so the Bill of Rights Institute does create resources

17:45 and one of the resources we’ve created is one on Ben Franklin and civic virtue and there’s some teacher notes at the front but if you’re if you want a little bit more context for the for Ben Franklin and how he chose to organize themselves this is a really easy entry point with some great questions to consider maybe that you could journal about and then there’s actually a

18:05 journal prompt where it asks you to to think about why you should try and be the best or perfect is perfection attainable is it what you should be striving for like Ben Franklin identified places in your life where it’s not perfection but just improvement and explain why you’re looking to do

18:26 those things my husband and I have started saying something in our house which is if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing poorly which is helping us overcome some of our because there’s because doing something poorly means that you’ve done something otherwise you just don’t do anything because you let

18:48 the perfect be the enemy of the good which is what they’re kind of free is that people dandy about a lot yeah one of the things if I could interrupt one of the things I really like about this resource I don’t really he’s not a biography I recommend that too if you have some time it’s it’s a short one quite a very long 120 pages our staff is I see that like be like Ben and what’s

19:08 interesting is if you really read it closely and read that whole resource it’s not if you live his life table emulate him but rather grasp how to take a look at your own life so I think that connects what you were talking about earlier with the different writers and their sleep habits but also the the deep reading that the Kirk was talking about

19:29 and Churchill and his approach but also that whole it’s about reflecting on what is good for you what is working and how can you improve and it’s not be like someone else but rather to see yourself and I think that’s really cool about the way he writes that absolutely go ahead Kirk no I was just gonna agree and say that in

19:50 that is sort of the the the seeds of in doing that activity you’re beginning to govern yourself because you’re thinking about what you’re doing you’re being explicit about what you’re doing day-to-day and it doesn’t have to be an odious chore it sounds something like you got a regimen every five minutes but you know there there are some benefits just to being a little bit

20:12 more deliberate and a little bit more mindful and then that brings us back to the helpers and being a helper and recognizing that you are a powerful young person with infinite capacity and that infinite capacity is even more important right now because there’s so much need and so much opportunity so

20:33 it’s not that you have to do big grand perfect things but how are you contributing in really small ways to things you know you can contribute to is that something super easy like putting up a more educational tick-tock video or one that helps people feel less isolated right like the real life at home hash tag or the more you know hash tag or is

20:54 that something bigger like Kirk mentioned earlier volunteering donating blood doing what it is that your community can do right now that you can lead because you have that kind of power and that creativity and that potential and you have that ability to govern yourself that you don’t always have so

21:16 on that note on that exhortation and invitation into a civic engagement we’re gonna leave you for the day Gary Kirk any kind of last thoughts to the to the kids for today no I think Ubu is really a really big thing like look at your day and just be you and see what tomorrow can be well thank you all very much and

21:39 I was just gonna say let us know what what what you’re working on let us know what you’re thinking about let us know what you you know whatever your whatever you’re comfortable sharing with us if you have any questions to that you’d like us to explore we’d love to have you reach out yeah this is a new experiment for the Bill of Rights Institute we want to keep doing the bright and early shows episodes so we were relying on you to

22:02 give us feedback about what you’d like to hear what you’re thinking about what you’re doing in your community is what you need more support on and we’ll do our best to try and meet those needs so thank you all very much be well be safe be good we’ll talk to you soon hi

22:25 you