In this episode, Matthew Dicks and I dug into his book “Storyworthy“.
You can find more on MatthewDicks.com and on StoryworthyMD.com, and here is Matthew’s TEDx talk on “Homework for Life” and I mentioned on the show:
You can listen to the episode here:
Full Transcript:
Mickey Mellen (00:02)
If I had to tell a story from today, a five minute story on stage about something that took place over the course of the day, what would it be? As benign and boring and inconsequential as it might seem, what was the most story worthy moment from my day? So that’s a little bit from Matthew Dicks’ book, “Storyworthy”, and here to chat about it is Matthew Dicks. So Matthew, appreciate you being here.
Matthew Dicks (00:19)
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Mickey Mellen (00:21)
Yeah, this is fantastic. yeah, Storyworth is fantastic and the whole idea of homework for life is what you kind of call that story worthy moment from the day. So why don’t we maybe start there then. What is homework for life? I’ve heard others talk about it and I’ve tried to do it myself, but it’s a tricky thing.
Matthew Dicks (00:35)
Sure, you know, it’s essentially the idea that, you know, every day is worth living and therefore every day is worth remembering in some at least small way and maybe, and maybe large way, depending on how you’re feeling about it. It’s the idea that we move through our lives so often and we sort of leave everything behind. You know, we carry our stuff when we move, we pack boxes and we go from one apartment to a house, to wherever.
Mickey Mellen (00:56)
Yep.
Matthew Dicks (01:02)
And yet our memories, the most treasured things we have are left behind. So for me, I was looking for stories to tell on a stage. I was looking to tell better stories on a stage than ever before. And I was worried that I was going to run out of stories that eventually over time, suddenly I’d find myself, you know, rolling out the same chestnut and I did not want to be that person. So I gave myself this homework assignment being an elementary school teacher. I’m inclined to think problems can be solved through homework. And so.
Mickey Mellen (01:23)
Mm-hmm.
You
Matthew Dicks (01:32)
I said to myself, at the end of every day, I’m going to ask myself what the most story worthy moment is in this day. The actual prompt I give myself is, if someone kidnapped my family and wouldn’t return them before I told a story on the stage about something that happened this day, what would that story be? Oddly enough, I work for the FBI now helping their hostage negotiation unit. So I actually help the people who help folks who’ve been kidnapped. But that sort of prompt gave me the idea that
You know, I’ll find something every day. It won’t always be a story, but at least I’ll hold onto a moment. And you know, what began as a search for stories really has now developed into a search for just meaningful moments in my day. Whether that’s a snippet of dialogue that caught my ear, or I saw something differently for the first time, or I felt something differently. I thought something or I did something. It really can be almost anything. And people who do homework for life, they report the same results. You know, I.
I started it in 2013 and I was finding about 1.2 moments per day that were worth holding onto. Today I find 7.8 moments per day, the last time I did the math. And it’s not because my life is more interesting in any way whatsoever, it’s just I see things that I didn’t see before. And I’m holding onto things that I’m thrilled to be holding onto. So, you know, it’s the idea that we’re gonna do this. And it’s not a journal, right? We’re not gonna write very much. For me, it’s an Excel spreadsheet. It is…
Mickey Mellen (02:36)
Hahaha.
Matthew Dicks (02:58)
two columns, the date, and then stretch that B column across the screen. Cause I think one of the critical things and why people have found so much success with it is it’s not a chore. You know, it’s a simple five minute activity and that single cell in Excel limits the amount of words you can actually write, which is what I’m looking for. You know, I have at most maybe five sentences to capture the moment from the day.
And so you do that often enough, eventually you start to see your life is filled with moments you never expected.
Mickey Mellen (03:29)
Gotcha, that’s awesome. And so when you have seven things, you said your average seven, so you put all seven in your spreadsheet for any given day if you have that many? Okay.
Matthew Dicks (03:34)
I do. Yeah.
Yeah. So yeah, most days have multiple entries, which means I’ve seen or heard or felt or experienced more than one thing that I think are worth holding onto. and actually just the act of writing it causes you to remember so much better. You know, one of the problems we have in our lives is that people say time flies and it doesn’t, all you have to do is ask someone who’s incarcerated. If time flies, they’ll tell you it doesn’t. The problem is we just forget everything. So.
Mickey Mellen (03:47)
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Matthew Dicks (04:03)
If I was to ask you, how many days do you remember from 2017? If you’re really good, you might remember maybe 50 to 75 days, which means you’ve taken 365 and reduced it to 50, which is why time seems to fly. Cause you can only remember the days that sort of really made an impact on you when all those days actually happened and contained a multitude of things. So homework for life says, hold onto every one of those moments.
Mickey Mellen (04:12)
Cool. Yeah.
Matthew Dicks (04:32)
And simply by writing it down, actually tend to retain many more of them. And as a result, you feel like you’re living a fuller and more complete life. Even if you don’t want to tell stories, you should be doing homework for life just so you can look back and see the things you’ve done.
Mickey Mellen (04:46)
So talk about looking back a little bit. How often do you go back and review past entries and dig back to 2017 to see what you were up to?
Matthew Dicks (04:52)
Right. So I like to do a hundred entries at a time. And then I switched to a new sheet. Right. So I have a giant Excel spreadsheet with multiple sheets, you know, with a hundred entries per. I like to get a couple hundred entries away before I go back and start actually looking for things that will amount to stories. You need that perspective, something that feels extremely important on a given day, two weeks later will seem inconsequential. And that is often the case. And the reverse is true. Sometimes something will happen that you won’t realize.
Mickey Mellen (05:03)
Gotcha.
Matthew Dicks (05:22)
is an important step in a story that you’ve been engaged in for six months. You just didn’t see it because things haven’t sort of coalesced in a way that made it clear to you. So I like to get a little perspective before I start pulling out things that I will identify as stories I might tell on a stage or on a page someday. But in terms of going back to sort of 2017, my favorite thing to do on a plane, particularly if I can’t get onto wifi is I’ll open up my spreadsheet and I’ll just relive 2017.
You know, there’s probably about a thousand entries or 1200 entries from, from that year. And I’ll probably have maybe half of them sort of right in my head or very close to the tip of my tongue. But the other half are totally lost to me until I read through the spreadsheet. And the remarkable thing is as soon as I read it, I’m right back in that moment again, I’m experiencing the moment again. It just reminds you that that year was really valuable and it meant something. And then the other added benefit of it is.
As you start to do homework for life and you start to see your life through that lens of storytelling, things from the past that you have left behind will begin to bubble up. And so many of my homework for life entries aren’t actually things happening on this day, but there are things that happen on this day that caused me to remember something from middle school or when I was 26 or when I was four. So it gives you access to the past that you don’t currently have as well.
Mickey Mellen (06:47)
Gotcha. Do you always tie them together? Because I’ve had a few where I’ve said randomly, I don’t know why I thought of this moment from years ago. So that was what I put down in homework for life. I thought of this moment today, but I don’t know why I thought of it. It wasn’t a story from today really. It was just a memory that crept in. How do you deal with those?
Matthew Dicks (07:01)
So right now I code them as a memory. If I don’t, what happens is if I go back and start reading 2016 and there’s some random memory from my childhood, it’ll totally confuse me. I say, why was I in a classroom that day? Right? So I’m coded as a memory. You know, I have an app coming out that’s going to do something even better and I’ll create a timeline. So if I say, oh, this happened in September of 2020, 10, right. It’ll actually place it in the timeline and say, oh, September, 2010.
Mickey Mellen (07:11)
Right.
Matthew Dicks (07:29)
this item will now go here. And so it’ll start to fill out your life in an actual chronological way. But you don’t need to do that. You just sort of need to make sure you, you mark it as a memory in some way. And you don’t need to do, use an Excel spreadsheet. But the reason I like Excel is it limits the amount of writing you do. If you start writing too much, it’ll become a chore and there’ll be days when you just decide you don’t have enough time. But you always have enough time to fill in one cell on a spreadsheet. If you…
If you have time to brush your teeth, you have time to do that. So the limiting nature of something like a spreadsheet, I think is critical to the practice.
Mickey Mellen (08:04)
Gotcha, that’s fantastic. There’s something else you do that we both do that we’re among a dying breed that we both blog daily. I love writing every day. I’ve compared it to how it opened my eyes like a photographer on a photo walk. A photographer goes on a photo walk, they’re out there intentionally looking for things to take pictures of and as a daily blogger, I’m living my life looking for things I can write about but it’s kind of different from, I think it’s similar though you talked about as you start doing it you’ll have more ideas for stories. So I kind of see…
Matthew Dicks (08:10)
Yeah.
Mickey Mellen (08:30)
The stuff you blog about and the stuff you put in homework for life are almost two different things. You have your eyes open to all kinds of possibilities. Is that fair? Do you see those through two different lenses?
Matthew Dicks (08:38)
Yes, occasionally a homework for life moment will slide into my blog for sure. It’s typically though, when I have a sort of an extension or a thought on the moment that took place, but you’re right. I moved through my life constantly looking for ideas. So I read a news article and I think, I have a feeling or an opinion about this. Or sometimes I’ll just, I’ll read something and I’ll think, I don’t know what I think about this yet, but I’m sure I’m going to find something to say about it.
eventually. And so all of those things become a collection that end up in my blogging software. Honestly, they end up as drafts. So if I read something that’s interesting to me, even if I don’t know what I would ever do with it, it just becomes a new draft. So I think I have about 189 drafts in my blogging software right now. The oldest one is from 2015, which means back in 2015, I found something that I thought someday I’ll want to say something about. And it’s still sitting there waiting for me to figure out exactly what I want to say about it.
Mickey Mellen (09:12)
Okay.
Hahaha.
Matthew Dicks (09:34)
I’ve discovered that one of the things about sort of blogging every day is it’s the collision of two ideas that often produce the most interesting posts. So something that I read from three years ago that still sits there in my drafts and something I review constantly, I’m always looking at and going, right, that article, I still don’t know what to do about it. One day something will happen and I’ll say, you know what? This is just like, or this reminds me of this. And now I have something to say about it. So it’s not uncommon for me to be
Mickey Mellen (09:42)
Yes.
You
Matthew Dicks (10:04)
posting something that seemingly was written on the day I’m posting it, but it really began years ago with the inkling of a thought that eventually became something that I thought was worth sharing with the world.
Mickey Mellen (10:18)
Yeah, well said. I do the same thing, but had never put it together that that nicely. Now I only have about 35 drafts in mind. I don’t have quite as many as you, but it’s the same thing. Some have been around for a couple of years and I’ll eventually get back to them when something else hits that that does that. you dropped a quote in your book from Anne Lamott, which I thought was fantastic. she said, and then therefore you said you own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. And I’m not sure what to do with that, but I love it. I think it’s fantastic where people think
Matthew Dicks (10:24)
Yeah.
Mickey Mellen (10:46)
the poor guy, he’s sick or whatever, so we need to be nice. And you should show empathy for sure, but if someone’s jerk, they’re a jerk, you know, and you should behave better.
Matthew Dicks (10:53)
Yeah. Right.
I, you know, I say, don’t tell a story that’s going to damage a relationship that means something to you. Right. But if it’s not a relationship that means something to you and someone treated you poorly, I’m all in favor of you telling the story. And I do this with reckless abandon, you know, so I am willing to name names and call people out and let the world know how I feel about individuals who I find loathsome or
Mickey Mellen (11:03)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Dicks (11:23)
annoying or disdainful, all of these things. Yeah. I think we tend to shy away from criticism, fearing what might come, you know, in return. And I just think, like Ann said, if you wanted me to say something nice about you, you should have done something nice. Otherwise, I’m just going to be honest about what you’ve done to me. Within reason, again, never say anything that will hurt someone who you care about. You know, I once had a storyteller say,
Mickey Mellen (11:25)
Yeah.
Right.
Matthew Dicks (11:51)
you’re so lucky your mom is dead. And then she immediately backtracked. But I understood what she meant, which was you’re fortunate that your mom can’t hear what you’re saying now. Because she wants to say things about her mom, but her mom has access to the internet. And so she can’t actually go out on stages and say things that are recorded because she loves her mom and doesn’t want to her feelings. Yeah.
Mickey Mellen (12:17)
Gotcha, yep.
And that’s, yeah, I love that with your blog too. I notice, it does frustrate me. So many people write something and say, I was at a store, I’m not gonna say the name of the store today, but this horrible thing happened. And you’re like, no, no, I was at Walmart and here’s exactly what happened. And like, yeah, why hold that back? So, that’s fantastic.
Matthew Dicks (12:25)
Yeah.
Right. Exactly. Well, specificity
is powerful in telling a story because it creates an immediate image. People get frustrated that they don’t know what story, because their brain sort of doesn’t know what to create in the mind. If I say I was at a store, I’m not going to name that amorphous nature of the description really frustrates, you know, your imagination. So saying I’m standing in a Walmart solves all of those problems for me, because now you can see it with perfect clarity.
Mickey Mellen (12:56)
I wasn’t sure why it frustrated me and that’s exactly it. So well said. I want to dig in briefly too to your basic rules for storytelling. wrote five in my notes, or four, excuse me, four in my notes. I’m not sure if the four you would agree with, but I think the four that stood out to me at least. So first one is every story is about a five second moment when things change. So you’re big about here’s the moment. You kind of wrap it around things a little bit, but why just five seconds?
Matthew Dicks (13:17)
Well, I think that change is instantaneous. I think a lot of things can lead up to it, but essentially a story is about change over time. and the change is essentially I once was one thing and then a switch flips. You know, if I used to believe that the sky was red, right? And then some stuff happened over the course of time and I’m suddenly convinced the sky is blue. There was a singular moment where I thought it was red.
And then the next moment I decided it was blue. And I think that’s in general, all things in life. There’s a moment when I liked my wife a lot. And then there was a moment when I loved her. And that moment of change from like to love is a story worth telling. And so the mistake people make is they often think something happened to me. I will tell you what happened and therefore I will have told you a story. And that’s not a story. That’s just reporting on your life.
and no one has ever wanted you to report on your life, with the exception of perhaps your mother and maybe your spouse. So we have to find these singular moments of change, and I do believe they happen almost instantaneously.
Mickey Mellen (14:18)
You
Yep, I like that. And so related to that, you say the story should begin as close to the end as possible.
Matthew Dicks (14:30)
Yes, that’s not my rule. It’s Kurt Vonnegut’s rule, but I believe in it. And that’s the idea that stories don’t require prologues. They don’t require exposition. We want stories to begin as close to the end as possible. Meaning let’s start with some action. Let’s actually get into the story to the point that it creates wonder and excitement rather than saying, before I tell you the story, let me explain a few things to you. Nope. Nobody has ever asked for a story in that way either. You can teach us things.
Mickey Mellen (14:32)
Okay.
Matthew Dicks (14:58)
once the story has gotten started, but get it started. Also by starting as close to the end as possible, your story will be shorter. And the shorter version of every story is the better version of every story. If I said to you, hey, let’s go to the movies. There’s a movie that’s six hours long, and there’s a movie that’s 90 minutes long. You don’t have anything to do today, and both movies are A plus movies. Which do you want to see?
Almost everyone says the 90 minute movie and almost everyone believes the 90 minute movie will somehow actually be better. Even though like, if you’re thinking about like the price you’re paying per hour of entertainment, you should absolutely choose the outstanding six hour movie. It’s a better deal. But we recognize that when someone understands how to edit their work and make it more concise and sharp, it tends to just be the better version of the story.
Mickey Mellen (15:50)
Yep, I mean it’s Blaise Pascal’s quote that I’ve shared a lot. If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter. So yes, I mean…
Matthew Dicks (15:57)
I didn’t realize that was Blaise Pascal. thought that was, it’s so funny, I thought that was Mark Twain.
Mickey Mellen (16:02)
I it’s Pascal. There’s debate. you could, yeah, I may be wrong, but I think I’ve established that it’s Pascal, but no one knows for sure. But yes, there you go. It’s a great quote for sure. Next one, you kind of alluded to this with the Walmart stuff a minute ago, but the story should be told in the present tense so people can put themselves there.
Matthew Dicks (16:05)
Okay. Yeah.
Okay, well I like it either way. Yep.
Yeah, whenever possible. Now, some people, they just can’t sort of make that shift. They’ve been telling stories in the past tense forever. But if you can shift to the present tense, it almost feels as if it’s happening in that moment. It becomes more visceral for the audience. It also affords you access to the past tense so that when you’re talking backstory, when you’re taking us in the past, in the middle of your story, you can shift to the past tense. That’s a great indication to an audience we’re now in the past and an indication that we’re now moving back to sort of the present.
or the storyline as it began, we just shift to the present. So it’s an easy way to improve cognition while we’re telling a story. There was just some research that came out, I’m writing about it now, that Amazon reviews that are written in the first person are more appreciated, not in the first person, I’m sorry, the present tense, are more appreciated than those written in the past tense. Like they receive more readings and more favorable responses. I just think people, when they hear stories in the present tense,
It’s more exciting in their brain. almost tricks them into thinking they’re in the story at that moment.
Mickey Mellen (17:22)
Gotcha. And you say you’re writing about this, is this going to be on your blog? You’ll write that? Or where will that come out?
Matthew Dicks (17:27)
That’s a great question. It will probably come out on my blog and then eventually get sucked into my next book in a more expansive way, which is typically how I write, which is I throw an idea out on the blog, which is really me thinking sort of in writing and I put it there for a while and then oftentimes it’ll expand and eventually become the next chapter in a book.
Mickey Mellen (17:34)
Gotcha.
Got you, awesome. And then the fourth one, we’ll cover it here. I think you’ve already covered it pretty well in the last three, but the story should always have a specific location. Every moment has a scene and every scene has a setting.
Matthew Dicks (17:58)
Yes, we want to activate imagination in the audience’s mind. And I love locations, especially because they’re imbued with sort of a thousand adjectives. You know, if I tell you I’m standing in a kitchen, you can see it with perfect clarity. It’s probably your kitchen or maybe your parents’ kitchen or wherever it is. As a storyteller, what I don’t want to do is describe anything. I don’t like adjectives in storytelling. What I like to do instead is steal the images that already exist in your brain.
because those images are more clear than any image I can create with words. Right, that’s different than writing. When I’m writing my novels, adjectives are all over the page because people want a fully realized world and they’re investing eight, 10, 12 hours on one of my novels. But if I’m speaking out loud, no one’s hoping I describe things. That’s the last thing they want. So rather, I just look for good, hard nouns that I know people can already see.
And whenever I can, grab those and locations do that beautifully. Cause almost every location has sort of every person has a version of that location in their brain. So unless the specificity of my kitchen is relevant to the story and it almost never is, I’ll just say kitchen and I’ll let you put me in your kitchen. And I’m thrilled when you do that.
Mickey Mellen (19:13)
Gotcha, that’s fantastic. So, yeah, those four basic rules then. Yeah, every story is about a five second moment. It should begin as close to the end as possible. It should be in the present tense and have a specific location. So those are some great tips there. And of course, that’s almost separate from the homework for life, which is, think, perhaps even more important. But I do love, yeah, the quote from the book you’ve kind of expressed already I wanna share here though. As you begin to take stock of your days, find those moments, see them and record them, time will begin to slow down for you. The pace of your life will relax. And that’s what everyone wants that. They all say time’s going too fast.
I need to slow things down and you have a solution here that takes people five minutes a day and will slow things down dramatically and more people should do it. yeah, homework for life is the way to go and you have a great talk. I found you via a YouTube video where you had a TEDx talk where you talked about homework for life that was just fantastic and got me going on it. So I’ll share that in the show notes as well. lots of great stuff. So anything else you want to share that people need to take away from this before they go check out your book?
Matthew Dicks (20:02)
That’s great. Yeah.
Well, you know, I’ll tell people that, you know, the beauty of homework for life is you’ll have more stories to tell. And I think that if we move into the world telling more authentic, vulnerable, genuine stories about our lives, we’re just going to connect more with people. There’s an epidemic of loneliness in this country. And I’m not surprised that a loneliest researcher just reached out to me recently and reached out to me because she identified me as one of the most connected people she knows. And
You know, there’s lots of reasons why that is true. Some of them I didn’t even realize. You sort of don’t know what you know until someone starts asking you questions, or you don’t know what’s important to people. But I knew that one of the reasons I have as many friends as I do and as I’m as connected as I am is because I tell stories. When we share, it invites other people to share. you know, there’s lots of reasons to be doing homework for life, but my hope is that people will tell more stories because it is the way to build connection in your life and find the people you need.
Mickey Mellen (20:44)
Mm-hmm.
Awesome, well said, thank you for that. So where can people find more about you? I’ll have some links in the show notes, but yeah, want you to tell us where best to track you down.
Matthew Dicks (21:11)
Sure.
Yeah, two websites. If you go to matthewdix.com, that is sort of me and everything that I do, including my blog. And if you go to storyworthy.com, that’s all of my storytelling life. So there’s a free academy there. If you want to learn about the things we’ve talked about in terms of storytelling and homework for life, you can actually just get an account there and go through hours and hours of free courses that will help you become a better storyteller, find more stories in your life, all of that kind of thing.
Mickey Mellen (21:37)
That is fantastic. I’ll have all those in the show notes. You all check them out and if you haven’t read it yet story worthy is a Fantastic book to unpack all this stuff. So Matthew. Thank you so much for your time. I greatly appreciate it Thank you
Matthew Dicks (21:47)
I appreciate it as well. Thanks so much.
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