If you write a blog, or send emails to a mailing list, or if you have grandchildren to entertain, it’s good to have a few personal stories in your back pocket. There’s a tip in Storyworthy, by Matthew Dicks, that will help you keep track of your daily life stories.
Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks
Earlier this year, I borrowed this storytelling book from our city’s online library – Storyworthy, by Matthew Dicks. (Amazon link)
To be honest, I skimmed through most of it, and got a few tips on constructing stories, but nothing too exciting.
Until I got to Chapter 3.
Homework for Life
In Chapter 3, I found one storytelling tip that I started using right away, and I’ve used that tip every day since.
Chapter 3 is titled, Homework for Life, and it gives you this assignment, as your daily task:
- At the end of every day, write a short note about something “story worthy” that happened that day.
- It doesn’t need to be a big, important event – just something interesting or unusual
- You don’t need lots of details. Just write a few words that will remind you of that story
The author keeps his notes in a spreadsheet, so that’s what I’m doing too. Maybe that was the part that appealed to me!
Keep Your Story Notes
I work at my computer all day, and Notepad++ is always open. I make notes as I work, to keep track of where I’m spending my time. Most of the notes are about work projects, but I keep personal notes there too.
Every morning, I look back over the previous days notes, and enter my work hours in Access. And now, since reading about Homework for Life, I also make a short note in Excel, about a story from the previous day.
Here’s a screen shot of my list, filtered to show a few of the items. As you can see, there’s nothing extraordinary there – just mundane daily life stories.
And because every sheet should have at least one formula, there’s a count of the stories in cell A1:
- =COUNTA(tblStories[Note])
What To Do With the Stories?
Will I ever do anything with those stories? Who knows.
It’s interesting to jot the stories down though, and can help put a bad day in perspective, when you review it the next day.
Like that bad day I had on March 8th, when I stomped downstairs mid-afternoon, and announced, “I don’t want to make soup, and I don’t want to eat soup.” So, we got the last of the Christmas leftovers out of the freezer, and had a “Christmas in March” supper instead. Fun!
I’ll also have stories to tell my grandkids, if we’re ever allowed to get together with our family again! And I’m sure my son will share some of his bad jokes too!
Video: Homework for Life
This video shows Matthew Dicks’ Homework for Life talk at TEDxBerkshires, in 2015.
Unlike Matthew Dicks, I’m not aiming to do any TED talks with my stories, or get up on any stage, anywhere.
Our lives are full of little stories though, and it’s nice to have a simple way to remember some of them!
_________________________________