Why do we say "A watched pot never boils"?

Meaning:

This proverb is often spoken when someone is eagerly awaiting something but that something is taking an unexpectedly long time to occur. Paying too much attention to it to the exclusion of everything else seems to make time go slower.

Background:

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was a Founding Father of the United States of America; he helped draft the country’s foundational document, the Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776. He was also a polymath—“a person of encyclopedic learning” according to Merriam-Webster. He was a politician, diplomat, inventor, and writer who was highly regarded during his lifetime, and is still revered today.

He was a successful publisher as well, purchasing The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729 and running it for the next 19 years. In addition to disseminating news to the citizens of Philadelphia and beyond, he used the paper to document his research on electricity, including reporting on his famous kite-flying experiement. He wrote extensively about politics, and published the first political cartoon in America (which he drew himself). Unusually for the time, he published essays and letters from readers (many of which he wrote himself, using a pseudonym).

One of Franklin’s pen names was Richard Saunders (a name which he borrowed from a writer in England who published under the alias Cardanus Rider—an acronym for Richard Saunders), and he used this persona to publish his Poor Richard’s Almanack. Almanacs weren’t new—they’d been around since at least the early 1600s and offered annual predictions about weather and crop yields, and also provided important information such as a calendar of events, astronomical data, and tide tables. Franklin’s version also included “recipes, trivia, advice, aphorisms, and proverbs about industry and frugality.” According to the Benjamin Franklin Historical Society, “Franklin considered it a vehicle of instruction for common people who could not afford books, a literature for the masses. Almanacs were the most read secular books in the colonies.” The first issue was published in 1732 for the 1733 calendar year, and it was put out annually for the next 25 years.

Now, fast-forward to 1776, when Franklin was dispatched to France as an envoy for the newly minted United States of America. His main job was to convince Louis XVI to support the colonists in their war against their common enemy, England. He was, however, often called upon to weigh in on other matters. In one instance, in 1784, he was asked to report on Franz Mesmer’s controversial theory of “animal magnetism.” In his paper, Franklin wrote the following:

Finally another Breakfast is ordered. One Servant runs for fresh Water, another for Coals. The Bellows are plied with a will. I was very Hungry; it was so late; “a watched pot is slow to boil,” as Poor Richard says.

It’s unclear if he didn’t exactly remember what Poor Richard had or hadn’t said, or if he miswrote the attribution, because the phrase never appeared in any issue of the Poor Richard’s Almanack.

No one knows how the saying became popular but it quickly made the rounds because it so neatly summed up the feeling of time slowing down. The first time the proverb was written in the format we know now—“a watched pot never boils”—was in Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 novel, Mary Barton.

The adage’s meaning hasn’t changed in the 200+ years since Franklin penned it, and the saying remains in popular use.

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