Homework for Life
You have a more interesting life than you think.
Homework for Life is Matthew Dicks' daily storytelling practice: spend 2–5 minutes each night identifying the single most story-worthy moment from your day, then record it in a two-column spreadsheet — just a date and a handful of evocative words. Unlike journaling, the goal isn't documentation — it's training your attention to catch the small, human moments of change before they vanish from memory. Over time, practitioners develop both a searchable archive of real story material and a live, always-on story radar that transforms how they move through each day.
“Hmm. I guess... my daughter asked me at breakfast why I never sing anymore. I used to sing all the time apparently. I don't even remember stopping.”
Two minutes a night reveals the story you were living without knowing it
Homework for Life is a deceptively simple daily discipline: each night, spend 2–5 minutes asking yourself which moment from today was most story-worthy, then record it in a two-column spreadsheet — date in column A, 2–15 evocative words in column B, never more. This is explicitly not a journal; the brevity is essential and intentional. The selection criterion is story-worthiness, defined by Dicks' foundational concept: the '5-second moment' — a tiny instant of change, realization, or transformation, often quiet and personal rather than dramatic. Over months and years, the spreadsheet compounds into a searchable catalog of the practitioner's life while simultaneously training a real-time sensitivity to story moments as they occur. Dicks calls the long-term result 'living storyworthy': an identity shift in how you inhabit and perceive your own days.
Most people believe their life isn't interesting enough for good stories — that compelling narratives require dramatic events, remarkable achievements, or extraordinary circumstances. The real problem isn't a shortage of story material; it's that the small, human moments of change that make the greatest stories pass through unnoticed and vanish from memory within days. Without a system to catch them, your most story-worthy moments are lost by morning.
Build the Homework for Life habit and you develop two things simultaneously: a growing, searchable archive of story material only you could possess, and a live attention that begins catching story moments as they happen — so that no meaningful day is ever lost again.
- A description of your day's events, conversations, or observations — even if they seem mundane
- Your existing HFL spreadsheet entries (if you have them) for pattern recognition and mining
- A specific entry you want to expand into a full narrative for a talk, class, or piece of writing
- Honest reflection on moments of surprise, change, connection, or quiet emotional resonance
- A complete HFL entry for today: the date plus 2–15 carefully chosen words that will trigger the full memory months from now
- A clear understanding of why your chosen moment is story-worthy — specifically, where its 5-second moment lives
- Story candidates identified and ranked from your existing archive by narrative potential
- A fully developed narrative arc built from a single spreadsheet entry, structured around the 5-second moment with stakes and payoff
Watch the methodology work.
Three specimens from a single real session: the same situation, unaided and calibrated, the full transcript, and the skill answering live in the channel where the work happens.
“You sit through a keynote speaker's vivid, personal stories and feel a quiet envy. You're a manager, a teacher, a parent — you've lived a full life — but when you search your memory for stories, everything feels generic. You remember categories of experience but not specific moments. When someone asks you to 'share a story from your own experience,' you describe a job title or a trip.”
“You have 200 entries in your Homework for Life spreadsheet. When you need a story for next week's all-hands, you open it and find: 'subway / stranger / umbrella' — and the whole scene floods back. You develop it into a three-minute narrative in an afternoon. When you stand up to speak, you're telling something true, something specific, something only you could tell. Three people come up afterward to say they'll remember it.”
The same skill, where the work happens.
No new app to learn. The methodology runs over the WhatsApp Business API, so the answer lands as a reply in the thread you’re already in — same rigour, zero context-switch.
What it does, specifically.
Each capability is a distinct move drawn straight from the source methodology — not a generic assistant guessing.
Nightly HFL Reflection
A guided 2–5 minute end-of-day session that walks you through identifying and capturing your most story-worthy moment. Targeted questions surface the right moment from your day, then help you distill it into the exact 2–15 words Dicks prescribes — brief enough to be sustainable indefinitely, specific enough to trigger the full memory later.
Story-Worthiness Coaching
Interactive teaching of what makes a moment story-worthy versus merely noteworthy. Helps you distinguish between big events — promotions, trips, milestones — which rarely make the best stories, and small, human moments of change that Dicks identifies as the actual material of great storytelling.
Five-Second Moment Detection
Helps you locate the atomic unit of your story candidate: the precise instant of realization, surprise, or transformation that gives a moment its emotional weight. Once identified, this 5-second moment becomes the center of gravity around which any full narrative is structured.
Archive Mining and Story Surfacing
Scans your accumulated HFL entries to identify patterns, emotionally resonant clusters, and high-potential story candidates. Surfaces the entries most likely to develop into compelling narratives for speeches, presentations, teaching moments, or personal writing.
Story Development from Entry
Takes a brief HFL entry — just a date and a few words — and helps you expand it into a full narrative using Dicks' Storyworthy framework: establishing the before-state, building stakes, arriving at the 5-second moment, and landing a resonant ending.
Graded before it shipped.
Every skill is scored against independent scenarios for methodology fidelity before it goes live — not vibes, a rubric.
Today's HFL Entry
A complete, formatted entry ready for your Homework for Life spreadsheet: today's date plus 2–15 carefully chosen words that will trigger the full memory of this moment months or years from now. Brief by design — sustainable every single night.
Five-Second Moment Map
A pinpointed analysis of the exact moment of change, realization, or transformation at the center of a story candidate — including the before-state, the moment itself, and what shifted. The emotional core around which a full narrative is built.
Story Development Blueprint
A structured narrative expansion of a single HFL entry: beginning, stakes, 5-second moment, and ending mapped out in full. Provides the architecture needed to tell the story in a presentation, classroom, pitch, or written piece.
Grounded in the original work.
Every answer traces back to a real source and the practitioner who wrote it — not a secondhand summary. Here is the source of record.
Matthew Dicks
Matthew Dicks is an elementary school teacher, award-winning competitive storyteller, and author of 'Storyworthy' (2018). He is one of the most decorated competitors in the history of The Moth StorySLAM and GrandSLAM competitions, with multiple championship wins. He teaches storytelling craft through workshops, online courses, and his widely read book, which has become essential reading for public speakers, educators, and writers who want to find authentic stories in their own lives.
Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling (2018)
Multiple Moth StorySLAM and GrandSLAM champion; author of 'Storyworthy' (2018); elementary school teacher and storytelling workshop educator.
Be first to run it.
Homework for Life is being built right now. Leave your email and we’ll tell you the moment it goes live.