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Matt Tom Jim

Homework For Life is my trademarked method of finding and recording the stories of our everyday life.

I’ve written about it in my book, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the power of Storytelling.

I’ve spoken about it many times, in workshops, interviews, college classes, and corporate retreats. My TEDx Talk on the topic has about 75,000 views and counting.

Thousands of people do Homework For Life today. They’ve created apps and workflows and automation to make the job easier. It’s taught in high school and college classes and has been included in curricula across the country.

Even if you never plan on telling a story… even if you plan on never speaking again for the rest of your life, you should still be doing Homework For Life.

I first started Homework For Life for myself back in 2014 (and I’ve been blogging daily since 2005), but my friend, Bengi, recently gave me a notebook that we used for communication back in an age before text messages and email, when we lived together from 1989-1992 in a home we affectionately called The Heavy Metal Playhouse.

For a short time, our friend, Tom also lived with us.

The notebook isn’t exactly Homework For Life. We weren’t seeking to capture the storyworthy moments from our days. But reading through the book resurrected so many memories.

I managed to recapture so much of my past.

The book is filled with our concerns of the day. Money and mice. Hamsters and parties. Household chores and friends. Girls and vacation planning. Notes from others who passed through our home and our lives.

It’s the power of the written word. The record of our days. The reclamation of a time long, lost to time, now returned.

It’s not Homework for Life, but it’s incredible just the same. It represents an opportunity to return to one of the best times of my life, when I was soul-crushingly poor, frequently cold, occasionally hungry, and absent of any meaningful, perceivable future, yet I needed so little to be happy.

I had been kicked out of my childhood home and sent to live the rest of my life on my own, yet I was awash in friendship, love, and joy.

These notes – passed back and forth between friends and roommates – brought back to my mind people I haven’t seen in decades, singular moments in time, and the feelings I had about my newly found independence, our seemingly endless struggle, and the building of a friendship that remains today.

It’s a reminder to all:

Write stuff down. Capture your days. Hold onto the preciousness that every day has to offer.

Homework For Life is the way I suggest you do so, but whatever you choose, don’t let a single day slip away again.