Ask 10 people if they make New Year’s Resolutions and nine of them will tell you they don’t. So I’m guessing you don’t do it either.

And if that’s true, you’ve been squashing an impulse that’s key to success in life: the natural desire to improve yourself.

I can’t say that I’ve always felt as strongly about New Year’s Resolutions as I do now, but I have felt strongly about the power of self-improvement my entire life. And I’ve attributed all of the good things I’ve managed to achieve to my drive to keep getting better.

Benjamin Franklin was my inspiration in many ways. I admired the determination and perseverance that took him from poverty to wealth, from being a nobody to being a success at everything he put his hand and mind to. (If you have never read a biography of him, you should do so one day.)

So about 20 years ago, when I decided to start writing a blog, I chose to model my theme on the advice in his generous and pragmatic letters, essays, and books.

I liked almost every recommendation I’d ever read by wise old Ben, but I had bridled at the one about “early to bed and early to rise.” After all, I had managed to achieve a fair amount of success by going to bed late and waking up after 9:00 (and sometimes 10:00).

But since he was so adamant about this particular idea, I had tried it out. And lo and behold, it immediately and measurably improved my life. It made me about 30% more productive in terms of gross work output. But it made me about 300% more productive in terms of accomplishing business, personal, and social objectives that really mattered to me.

And that, needless to say, made me about 100% happier!

So I named the blog Early to Rise, with the focus on efforts I had made to achieve the three core objectives identified in Ben’s maxim.

* My first priority at that point in my life was to increase my wealth.

* My second was to improve my health.

* And my third was to become smarter about things that I valued.

That tripartite approach worked well. It forced me to understand that although I had made wealth building my first priority, I could not ignore my second and third priorities if I expected to enjoy a somewhat balanced life.