A friend once told me of Leonardo Da Vinci's self improvement logs. Though I was unable to find further evidence that these logs were real, Benjamin Franklin has holds several Renaissance values.
Benjamin Franklin identified 13 attributes that he should have, and every day marked if he had failed to achieve some virtue or another. He very systematically tried to get them all. "Tho I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining..." (pg 71 of his autobiography).
Perfection was one ideal of the Renaissance, as was an orderly approach to life and achieving virtue. Franklin believed that perfection might be achievable by a human.
Erik, Ignatius Lollard, the founder of the Jesuit order, also recommends a daily self-examination. LDL
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