I don’t quite remember how I stumbled onto Matthew Dicks.
I want to say I was research storytelling. I think I was binging on Mike Birbiglia and wanted to tell stories like he did. Enter Matthew Dicks.
Matthew Dicks had a book out called Storyworthy. I got on Audible and instantly liked it. Dicks is quite the storyteller and has won a couple of storytelling competitions. Yes, such things exist. And if you do any kind of public speaking, I think this is must read.
While listening to the book I looked up Dicks on YouTube and found Ted Talk he did for “Homework For Life” - which I think he’s copyrighted. As he should, I had never heard of anything like it before.
This Homework 4 Life explains it better, but I’ll try to give it a shot.
In a nutshell, Homework for Life is this simple question you ask yourself: what was the most storyworthy part of my day? And write down a couple sentences. Note: This isn’t a journal entry. Those are long, take a lot of time.
Instead, Dicks’ Homework For Life takes a few minutes.
Dicks keeps his homework for life in an Excel Spreadsheet.
He has the date in one column and a couple of sentences in the next column. Again, nothing to long. Nothing to involved. Just a kind of logline about that moment.
I’ve done tried before, but like with most habits, they die on the vine in the first three days. I’ve had a reminder to write down my HW4L which is the tag I use for Bear, my note taking app.
Needless to say, I’d like to do it again. Or pick up the habit.
If I think about it hard enough, I know I had a moment today. But it was a tad personal.
I did have one yesterday.
Homework For Life
While my barber, a legal resident, was shaving my neck yesterday, I admitted who I was voting for and walked out without a scratch and really nice haircut.