A couple months ago, I picked up “Storyworthy” by Matthew Dicks for two reasons: One, Ali Abdaal recommended it. I personally think he has some of the best book recommendations, and I’ve got a good number of his recommended books on my reading list.
Secondly (and why it made it out of my ever-extending reading list), I am currently integrating “deliberate study” into my creative process. Simply put, I’m learning to harness my latent creativity. My first stop in this quest was writing and storytelling… and that’s how I came about reading “Storyworthy”.
While the book offers a handful of practical insights to aid the creative storytelling process, its core message is “Everyone has got a story to tell”.
Matt is a professional storyteller. He has a few books to his name and has also built an entire career telling stories in storytelling championships. I never knew that was a thing. Basically, storytellers get on a stage in front of an audience and tell stories, mostly from their life experiences, and these stories are then rated by a panel of judges. I personally think that’s a lot of pressure.
Every Day is a Story.
The good news is you don’t have to be a writer or an on-stage performer to tell a story. We probably have no problem recalling and telling stories about the few life-changing events we have experienced. However, we often do not realize even the seemingly mundane moments carry their own tale.
According to Matt, all great stories revolve around a five-second moment in a person’s life. Regardless of content or context, the crux of a good story lies in the very moment when something fundamentally changes in the storyteller’s life. We all have several such moments in our everyday lives, but we often fail to capture these “storyworthy” moments, and they are eventually eroded from our memory with the passage of time.
Homework For Life
Matt recommended a few practices that might help capture these fleeting and otherwise obscure moments in our lives, one of which he calls “Homework for life”. I know homework isn’t always fun, but trust me, this one is easy and enjoyable.
Essentially, at the end of each day, you are to ask yourself: “If I were to tell a story for 5 minutes about something that happened today, what would that be?” Once you figure out the “story-worthy” moment from that day, document it in a few sentences. Do this daily, and soon enough, you’ll realize your life is coloured with many beautiful stories worth telling.
Even if you don’t plan on telling your stories to an audience, doing “homework for life” has other benefits: First, it reinforces the habit of reflection and allows us to move through life at a slower pace. Due to the busyness of life, time seems to fly by at a rapid pace. Amidst all the hustle and bustle, homework for life prompts you to pause and ponder.
“Homework for life” also makes your life richer and fuller. Highlighting the significant event from each day helps us connect the dots in our evolution over time. By documenting these moments, we insure them against forgetfulness and can always refer to these archives in the future.
Do Your Homework
Upon discovery, I adopted Homework for life for myself. I can’t claim to be absolutely consistent with it –I fail to do my homework on certain days. Sadly, the story-worthy moments from those days are lost, maybe forever. But beyond the benefits mentioned earlier, another advantage of “Homework for life” is that if you engage in it long enough, you begin to spot those moments easily and more frequently.
Some of those moments also trigger long-forgotten moments from the past, and suddenly, you’re back in your past, reliving the stories that were once lost in time.
If you feel like your life is mundane and uninteresting, or it seems like life goes by too fast, and you’re unable to keep up, I recommend you try “Homework for life”. You’d be pleasantly shocked by how interesting your life is, and you just didn’t notice it.