Concept
Homework for Life
Homework for Life is Matthew Dicks's daily habit for finding stories: at the end of each day, write down in a sentence or two the moment from that day most worth telling, so that a life that feels uneventful becomes a growing collection of real, small stories.
Dicks, a teacher and a many-times winner of the Moth's storytelling competitions, says most people believe they have no stories because they wait for big events. The material is in ordinary days, but it disappears fast: by next month you will not remember what you noticed on a Tuesday. Homework for Life fixes that with a small, fixed routine. Every evening you ask which moment from the day would make a story if you had to tell one, and you note it briefly, with the date. Most entries are minor. Some, read weeks later, turn out to contain a change, a realisation or a surprise worth shaping. The habit also changes attention during the day: once you know you will have to write something down, you start noticing moments as they happen. It costs a few minutes and builds the raw material that every other storytelling skill depends on.
A real-life example
Ahmet, a sales manager in Gaziantep, is asked to open a team meeting with a story and draws a blank. He starts a note on his phone and adds one line every night: a customer who paid in coins, his daughter's first lie, a delivery driver who remembered his name. Six weeks later, reading the list, he finds the delivery driver line carries exactly the point he wants to make about service.
How to use it
- 1Choose a fixed moment each evening and write one or two sentences about the most story-worthy moment of the day, with the date.
- 2Do not judge the entries; small and ordinary is fine.
- 3Once a month, read the list and mark the entries that contain a change or a surprise.