The new celebrity obsession

One app idea that keeps kicking around in my head is what I call "You v. Ben."  From time to time, Ben Franklin's daily routine pops up on a productivity website, or even as clickbait elsewhere.  His charting of virtues (same link) also comes up from time-to-time.  Long story short, he was one of the most successful americans and obviously very disciplined, so who wouldn't want to be more like Ben?

Franklin not only left us his routine, he wrote it down in the form of an interactive chart.  It was kind of like an early form of gamification.  So that's the idea behind the app- turn Ben Franklin's routine and principles into a game.  Someone already did this with his thirteen virtues chart, but it's just the virtues chart.  I think the chart itself could use an update to make it easier to keep up to date, and his schedule could be included, and perhaps some of his other life experiences or principles could be incorporated.  For instance, he avoided meat in order to save money to buy books.  Maybe there's a meat-avoidance component, or just a thrift component.  Or a reading component.  He also gave away a lot of his inventions.  So maybe you get points for "open sourcing" your ideas.

Speaking of points, that's the big point- turn these charts and virtues and other things into questions and turn the answers of those questions into a score- a number that says not how good or bad or virtuous or punctual or whatever you are, but how much like Ben Franklin you are.  I'm reading his biography right now to see what other bits I can find that might not be as obvious.

Not sure if I'll make this, but it's the best idea I have at the moment, I think.  I wouldn't expect it to make a million, let alone a thousand or perhaps even a hundred dollars.  But at the outset it sounds like something a person or two might consider spending 99 cents on if it's good.  In the broader sense, I wonder if there could be legs to the general idea of gamifying the ideas of great thinkers and doers.  There's the trend of desire for self-improvement (look at all the couch-to-5k apps on the top charts), and there's the sense of nostalgia (maybe towards the 70's or 80's now, but why not the 1770's or 80's?), and then of course, the obsession with celebrity.  Top app seller Kim Kardashian and Ben Franklin aren't quite comparable, but maybe our nostalgic and celebrity-obsessed culture will manifest itself some strange way that will make this a great idea.