Abhishek Nair

Homework for life is a profound statement that highlights the importance of reflecting each day to find a story. And, that’s what’s been stated in Chapter 3 of the book called Story-worthy. Written by Matthew Dicks, an author, teacher and most importantly a storyteller. In this book of his, he enlightens the readers with his hilarious stories, provides strategies on how to become a good storyteller, and sets the readers with ‘Homework for life’.

I decided that at the end of every day, I’d reflect upon my day and ask myself one simple question: If I had to tell a story from today — a five-minute story onstage about something that took place over the course of this day — what would it be? As benign and boring and inconsequential as it might seem, what was the most storyworthy moment from my day?

Now, when I read this it felt like a revelation ‘of writing a few sentences’ to highlight the story-worth moment of the day. Therefore, I’d decided to implement ‘Homework for life’ into my system of Journalling. I’ve been practising this for the past couple of weeks. While reflecting on my day, I have been able to record moments that have been quirky, amazing and stressful which have become the story-worthy moment to my day.

How have I been doing this?

There are various options to consider when implementing a system for ‘Homework for life’.

1. The author himself prefers to use Google Sheets to write his story-worthy moments.
2. A standard Journal Notebook could also suffice.
3. I currently use a template on Notion, as highlighted below. It’s part of my journalling question set that I like to reflect upon.

Why is this important?

I have found the daily practice of writing a short story each day has a compounding element to remember the most unique moments from each day. And over time, as we continue to add these story-worthy moments, we end up creating a library full of stories that we can look back on providing a reminiscing outlook to revisit the past. And secondly, having a repertoire of stories makes dinner conversations much more interesting.

I fervently believe in the practice of ‘Homework for life’ and the value it has added to my life and your life if you chose to do the homework.