Homework for Life
Capture one story-worthy moment every day to build an endless bank of stories and slow down time.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 97%
A daily practice: every day, record the single most story-worthy moment of that day in a two-column spreadsheet (date, and a screen-width description). The goal isn't only to collect stories — it develops a 'lens for storytelling' that finds far more moments over time, recovers forgotten memories, reveals life patterns, and slows the felt passage of time by making each day accounted for.
Origin
Invented by Matthew Dicks ~15 years ago out of a fear of running out of stories to tell on stage; detailed in Storyworthy and his TED Talk.
Core principles
- 01Time doesn't fly — it 'goes by unaccounted'; every day has something worth remembering
- 02The lens compounds: Dicks went from 1.8 moments/day in year one to 7.6/day years later
- 03Only ~10% of entries become stories, but the other 90% is just as valuable for holding onto your days
- 04Doing it opens a channel for forgotten past moments to bubble up as recoverable 'memories'
How to run it
- 1
Set up the two-column log
Use a spreadsheet: column A is the date, column B (stretched to screen width) is a short description of the moment. Don't write the whole story — just enough to hold it.
Pro tip Google Sheets on your phone works; Dicks uses Excel and keeps it backed up in ~19 places.
- 2
Ask the kidnapping prompt each day
Every night ask: 'If someone kidnapped my family and said you can't have them back until you stand on a stage and tell a story about something that happened today, what would you tell?' Write that moment down.
Pro tip Better still, capture moments as the day goes on — check in at lunch (this morning), after work (this afternoon), and evening (since then).
Watch out Moments get forgotten fast; a hilarious thing your kid said at breakfast is gone by night if not captured.
- 3
Write it down even on empty days
On the day when the best you have is 'a cookout with the neighbors,' write it anyway. Its meaning may only appear months later.
Pro tip Tag recovered past events as 'MEMORY' so you don't later confuse when they happened.
Watch out Every day you skip is 'a day that is going to be lost to you forever.'
- 4
Trust the compounding lens
Accept you'll be bad at first — early on you're just looking for moments that touch your heart or mind, not polished stories. The volume and quality of moments you notice grows over years.
Watch out Don't expect a high hit-rate immediately; Dicks's jump from 1.8 to 7.6 moments/day took over 12 years.
In the wild
On a slow May day, the only thing Dicks logged was a backyard cookout with the neighbors on both sides — barely a story. Four months later, both couples announced divorces a day apart. The logged moment became the opposite bookend of a story about never knowing what's inside a marriage.
→ A seemingly worthless entry became the setup for a powerful story only because it was captured in the moment.
Logging small moments revealed a pattern: Dicks refuses a chore his wife asks for, she says 'no problem,' then he does it minutes later while banging things and grumbling so she hears. He realized he 'fights' with his wife privately through aggressive chores.
→ A recurring pattern invisible in daily life surfaced as a story couples find hilarious.
Common mistakes
Trying to write the whole story
Writing full stories every night is undoable; the log is a short prompt to hold the moment, not the finished piece.
Skipping the boring days
Discarding low-event days throws away time and future stories; the meaning of a moment often only appears later.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone who wants a lifelong supply of authentic stories — and to feel their days aren't slipping past unaccounted — whether or not they ever speak publicly.
Not ideal for
People seeking an instant story for a talk next week; this is a compounding practice, not a quick fix.
From the transcript
“I just decided every day before I go to bed, I'm going to look back on the day and find one moment that would have…”
“In the first year I did homework for life, I found 1.8 moments per day”
“I now find 7.6 moments per day. It's not cuz my life is more interesting. It's because I have a better lens”
“If someone kidnapped my family and said you can't have them back until you stand on a stage and tell a story about something that…”
From the episode
How to tell better stories
Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy)