263. How to Live a Life You Don't Regret | Matthew Dicks
Matthew Dicks is an acclaimed author, and storyteller extraordinaire, shares profound insights into the art of storytelling and its transformative power in our personal and professional lives. Known for his remarkable books such as 'Storyworthy' and 'Someday is Today,' Matthew delves into his unique perspective on productivity, creativity, and how storytelling can revolutionize the way we connect with others and understand ourselves. Join us as we unpack Matthew's compelling life experiences, from surviving life-threatening encounters to teaching and writing, and discover how these have shaped his relentless pursuit of meaning and excellence.Links Mentioned:
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Ash Roy's and Matthew Dicks Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Matthew Dicks:
In general, people have this weird belief that there is a tomorrow. For me, I have no belief in tomorrow. I fundamentally object to that belief. I've had CPR done on me twice, and I had a gun put to my head. Someone was counting down and telling me they were going to shoot me. I understand what it's like to be on the precipice.
It's one of those experiences that I often say I would never wish on anyone in the world, and yet I would never remove it. Well, I'm sitting behind a motionless car, enjoying air conditioning, and then it hits me. So often people think something fantastic or interesting has to happen in order for a story to really work, but.
Ash Roy:
Welcome back to the Productive Insights Podcast. I'm Ash Roy, your host, and this is Matthew Dicks, the author of multiple books, one of which is called Story Worthy, another is called Stories Sell, and yet another is called Someday Is Today. Now, Matthew is not only a prolific writer in different disciplines, such as productivity, which is what Someday is, today is about, and storytelling, which is what Stories Sell is about.
But he's also a fiction writer. He's a TEDx speaker. The guy is amazing. All this on top of the fact that he's a school teacher and a good one at that. So how did Matthew come to be so prolific in so many different areas? And you'll find in our conversation that some of the approaches he uses are not as traditional as the ones we talk about on this podcast.
One of them is he believes in focusing on many things, but probably one thing at a time. And we'll unpack all of that. So welcome to the podcast, Matthew. It's such a pleasure to have you.
Matthew Dicks:
Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Thank you for the kind introduction.
Ash Roy:
You're welcome, Matthew. I only came across your work four or five weeks ago when I first saw you speak at one of Ali Abdaal's event’s Part Time YouTuber Accelerator, which I'm part of, and I was blown away by how much you've covered in your short life.
I've since watched your talks on what is called the Moth, the, uh, you call them Moth Slams I think, now I'm going to start the conversation by talking about this book of yours, which is called Someday Is Today and it's built around the idea of productivity and being more effective as a content creator.
So, Matthew, one of the things you talk about that is a bit contrarian, is the idea that the more disparate things you do, the more effective you are at each of those disparate things. A lot of thinkers in this space, James Clear being one of them, who I spoke to in episode 175, doesn't quite say don't do disparate things, but he does talk about enjoying the journey and improving 1 percent at a time at one thing.
Steve Jobs was also famous for this. He was all about less is more and subtraction equals innovation and so on. Talk to us about your take on this.
Matthew Dicks:
Well, you know, as someone who makes things, I guess, you know, books and standing on stage and telling stories and, you know, I build businesses. I just find that the more I know about the world and the more experience I have with the world, the better off I am.
It is not uncommon for me to be in a consulting session with a client, you know, some, some vice president of some large tech company. And in the midst of that conversation, I bring in. Um, you know, elements from many areas of life that are all sort of additive or helpful in terms of understanding things, you know, the other day I was speaking to someone and my wife was sort of overhearing, you know, what I was talking about.
And she said, when I came out, she said, I heard you talk about a Christmas song from an obscure Christmas movie that used to be on television. And then I heard you talking about DNA, like the structure of DNA for some reason, and I heard you talk about storytelling and I heard you talk about aviation and amongst all of those things, I heard you talk about some teaching principles.
Like that was a weird conversation. And I told her, no, it's sort of what I do all the time. I'm always looking to sort of bring things together into some unifying understanding. And I think the, the wider, the scope you have, um, your understanding of the world, the more you'll be able to bring those things in to help either my clients, my students in my classroom, and the way that I inform my own work, my writing, my stories, things like that.
I believe in grabbing as much as I can and sort of pursuing every line of interest that I can find whenever possible, I think. I think that in general, people have this weird belief that there is a tomorrow that for some reason they oddly believe they will survive today and surely have a tomorrow to do the next thing.
And for me, I have no belief in tomorrow. I fundamentally object to that belief, primarily because I am keenly aware of that there is no belief. You know, the survivor of two near death experiences whose I've had CPR done on me twice. And I had a gun put to my head and someone was counting down and telling me they were going to shoot me.
I understand what it's like to be on the precipice. And so, if a door is presented to me, regardless of even if I care, what's beyond that door, if someone says, would you like to try this thing, try to do something new or different, even if it doesn't seem appealing to me, I go through that door every time.
I can always step back through it if it has no interest to me, but I would never allow the door to be closed. And that's sort of how I get that wide swath of understanding and interest in the world.
Ash Roy:
Well, I can relate to this one too different. I can read this from two different perspectives. One is I've always been very drawn to very different ideas.
So, I devour content around Eastern philosophy, which I find very interesting. I'm fascinated by the concept of enlightenment, although I have grave suspicions, if you like, I'm highly skeptical of it, but yet it fascinates me. I'm very interested in quantum physics. And if there is a relationship between that and Eastern philosophy, there's an interesting book called Tao, the Tao of Physics or Tao of physics, however you pronounce it, by Fritjof Capra.
I trained as an analyst in finance. I hated it, but I finished it because it was going to get me a good career. And it probably did for some time, but I too find I can have a conversation with somebody one minute about anthropology. And the next element of the conversation is about. Finance. And so I love that.
I really love surfing these different ideas and somehow bringing them together. And actually Steve jobs did say that one of the things that he found helped him as an innovator was to bring completely different ideas together and kind of marry them. So it's a wonderful relief to hear you say that. And I've not come across many people on the podcast who have Caught such a wide swath of lived experiences and even vicarious experiences, be it through reading and interest and so on.
The closest I came to death was when we lost our first son who was born premature. And that kind of made me question everything I was doing at the time. I was 38 and I was working in a job as an analyst, which was very unfulfilling. It was that moment for me, which made me question everything. While I have no idea what it's, what it's like to have a gun held to my head or to have a near death experience, that's the closest I got to it, but that was enough for me to just snap me out of my stupor that tomorrow is a given, it's not.
So, kudos to you for having turned something as traumatic as having been through that experience at McDonald's and turned it into fuel for amazing and prolific creativity.
Matthew Dicks:
Very kind.
Ash Roy:
No, I mean it. I'm not being kind. I'm being honest.
Matthew Dicks:
Thank you. You know, it's one of those experiences that I often say I would never wish on anyone in the world.
And yet I would never remove it, you know, if I could, you know, one of the unfortunate ramifications of that night is, you know, I'm going to struggle with PTSD for the rest of my life.
Ash Roy: Yeah.
Matthew Dicks:
And there was a time in my life recently, you know, just a couple of years ago when someone told me that I could do something called tapping.
Which is this process by which PTSD, I guess, can be alleviated to a certain degree, or maybe completely. And I had a few people mention it to me as being a successful treatment. And I actually went to my wife and I said, you know, there might be some kind of a treatment it sounds a little hokey, but it, but really respectable people seem to believe that it works.
And I said, do you think I should do this treatment? Because it kind of frightens me. And she said, after some thought, she said, I don't think you should do it. She said, I know it's not easy to live with PTSD and, you know, it's certainly treated to a great degree compared to how I once lived. She said, but it just seems so integral to who you are as a person.
You know, you are a relentless human being who uses every minute of his day meaningfully, whether it is spending time with her or my children or my cats or on the golf course, or making something creative or teaching students. And she said, it's, it would be kind of weird and maybe a little scary to imagine you not feeling like every minute matters.
And part of that feeling comes from, you know, that lingering sort of always in the back of your brain feeling that I think oddly my post-traumatic stress disorder helps to maintain. So, I would never wish it upon anyone, but even if given the opportunity to take it away, I'm not sure that I would. And the person who loves me most kind of thinks it should remain. So, it's an odd thing, but you know, has certainly been helpful to me since it happened.
Ash Roy:
Well, you know, my first son lives through my work. We were lucky. We went on to have two more kids, but one of the reasons I think I've persevered for 13 years and it has not been easy, uh, as you probably know, starting and building a business is hard work.
You know, there's a lot of moments of despondency and feels like you're crawling on broken glass. I don't know if I would have stuck it out this long if it wasn't for the inciting incident or the catharsis that led to this. I often wonder this, whether you'd be better off or happier just having that peace within you.
I don't know the answer and I don't think there is one, but it's certainly something worth exploring.
Matthew Dicks:
You know, there were times in my life when I thought meditation sounded ridiculous and yoga sounded ridiculous and yoga ended up being ridiculous for me. I can't. sit still unless there's some competition involved, but Meditation which I sort of tried to do because I wanted to prove a friend wrong that it would not be helpful and that it was kind of silly ended up being a really important practice in my life So, okay, you know even the hokey things I'm willing to open that door and at least give it a try before stepping back and saying no.
Thank you. That's not for me
Ash Roy:
Yeah, I did the 10 day Vipassana retreat, the silent retreat. And that was brutal. Um, it was very, very hard, but I finished it, but unfortunately, I didn't pursue a daily meditation practice, but I do meditate from time to time. I'm going to read a quote from Someday Is Today. Uh, and this is to the creatives out there.
One of the things I love that you say in this book is the most important thing you can do is a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Make terrible things. Walt Disney was fired from his job at the newspaper because his editor felt he lacked imagination and had no good ideas. This is a normal and essential part of the creative process.
Judge the work, not the person. Despise the product, but love yourself. This is so important. Then start again. Move forward. Make progress. I thought that was just beautiful.
Matthew Dicks:
Thank you. Well, you know, I work with people, a lot of creative people, sort of actually people who are launching YouTube channels and things like that, and their first video, their first product, their first year in business are not successful.
And, you know, they don't get to where they want. They don't get the audience that they desire, the attention they're looking for. And that is a very normal part of the process. And anyone who, You know, either looking to that one in a million person who went from zero to a hundred overnight, which those things do happen sometimes, but probably more through luck than anything else.
And those stars tend to burn out quickly. Whereas someone who believes in making things, whether it is a business or, you know, a product or art or a YouTube channel or a book. You have to just make a lot of stuff and then love yourself through the process and understand that sometimes, sometimes you're going to hate what you make.
And sometimes other people are going to hate what you make. But as long as you believe in yourself and love yourself and continue to move on, the process is the most important part. You can never sort of judge yourself or the thing you're doing based upon their results. Cause so often the results are predicated on things you have no control over.
You know, if you make something extraordinary, which happens all the time and no one cares about it, that is unfortunate, but a reality. I mean, Herman Melville died before Moby Dick became famous and Edgar Allen Poe died poor before anyone found his work. And Van Gogh sold one painting before he died.
These were people who did amazing things. And tragically, the results in their lifetime did not yield them what they were hoping for, but they produced astounding works of art that eventually were recognized. But what they did was they continued to produce regardless of what the results were. And that's what we have to do every day.
Ash Roy:
And that is such a difficult lesson to learn. It's something easy to understand intellectually, but it is so difficult to practice. And I just want to say, if Van Gogh was around today, I would imagine he would have not as difficult a time because the internet has created this amazing platform for just about anybody to be able to be seen.
And yes, I understand it's a double-edged sword because it also makes everybody invisible because there's so much to, to consume now. But that's a nice segue into my next question. And this is something I struggled with. You say you shouldn't be prolific and make a lot of stuff. Seth Godin said it beautifully in episode 200 to me, the first time he was on the podcast, which is, he said, Bob Dylan probably has made quite a few average songs.
But he wouldn't have got to his amazing songs unless he made those average songs. I get it. But in today's world, particularly as a YouTuber, or even if you're trying to rank on search engines with search engine optimization, you are writing for an audience. But I feel like if I want to be prolific, I want to create whatever I want to create.
But the SEO and the YouTube algorithms are forcing me to create stuff that's already working. And I feel like I'm in, in a psychological straitjacket. What is your advice to me and most other people who want to find a balance between creating stuff that is going to help them get found and make a living out of it, but also have the freedom to express themselves and explore ideas?
Matthew Dicks:
Well, I guess I, I give the advice that you do both. So if you are genuinely looking to make a living, let's say from YouTube and you have to maximize SEO, it is certainly possible for any YouTube creator to make 70 percent of their content, the kind of thing that SEO demands that, you know, the audiences will find thanks to the algorithms and then 30 percent of the work you do, Be something different because quite honestly, if you're trying to do what everyone else is doing, I kind of believe it's going to be even harder for you to be recognized when you are in a pack of people, it is hard to get recognized in the pack and it is only sort of when people dare to be different.
That recognition often comes now, you know, you are battling all of those technological constraints that the internet puts on you in terms of getting eyeballs. But I fundamentally believe that if you were doing something different and also extraordinary, if you were doing something that was so odd and yet compelling and violated all the norms that drive people to YouTube channels, I think you would get all the attention in the world that you want.
I mean, it is not very different than Picasso deciding to suddenly turn to cubism when no one would have ever imagined that being a thing, right? Everyone would have said, listen. Here is what is popular today. Here is what you should be doing today. The SEO of Picasso's time said, do this. And instead, he did that and the world recognized him for it.
So, you know, there's lots of examples in the world, thankfully, of people who did not remain inside the pack and continue to do what everyone else is doing. I think it's easy for me to say, do something different, find your own path, blaze your own trail. I believe in that. I really do. But if we want to play it somewhere down the middle.
Make 70 percent of your videos, the kinds that match the algorithms and make 30 percent experimental, different, the kind of things you want to make and let your audience know, this is one of those that's for me and maybe for you. And hopefully if it's something that's interesting, it will get people's attention.
It won't always, I'm working with a YouTuber right now who is doing something completely different than anything anyone I think has ever done before. So, I'm enthusiastic for her. I don't know if it's going to succeed because what she's doing might not actually be entertaining and appealing to the world, but I actually think she has a better chance to succeed than everyone who is sort of like following the norms and expectations of algorithms and SEO, because I think that maybe she'll have a better chance of breaking out and becoming enormous rather than, you know, good average, you know, above average. So. If you're brave enough and you don't need to make a living off it, do whatever the hell you want.
If you're looking to make a living off it, balance the numbers so that you can bring in the pennies while you are still feeling good as a creator.
Ash Roy:
That's great advice.
Matthew Dicks:
I've been writing a blog post for more than 19 years now without ever missing a day.
Ash Roy:
right, yes.
Matthew Dicks:
My audience for that blog post is less than 50, 000 people a day.
If you write every single day for 19 years, and your audience on the internet is less than 50, 000 people a day, that's actually not that great. That's 19 years of work for a very small audience that I don't seek to monetize in any way. And the reason it's 50, 000 people is because every single day on my blog post, I write for myself.
You know, I've had many people say, it’d be great if you focused your blog on one thing so people saw you as an expert and wanted to come to this place and learn this thing. And I said, I'm not interested in that. I wake up every morning and I write somewhere between 500 to 2, 000 words as a warmup for me, as a means of creating an archive of my thoughts, experiences, beliefs, you know, interactions with the world, it has helped me gather really remarkable resources into one place.
I mean, the people I work with who are, you know, sort of helping me build my business. You know, the person who just redesigned my website, she said, I've never met anyone with so much content on the internet. I can't believe how much we have to work with. It wasn't my plan 19 years ago to write enough so that a web designer could just simply, you know, harvest the work that I've been doing for 19 years and create a wonderful website.
I just said, every day, I'm going to write something and people who are interested will come and I'm not looking to make money off it. I'm just looking to expand my horizons. Collect my thoughts, create an archive that I can access when I need to. And it's been wonderful for me now. It hasn't made me any money and thankfully I have other ways to make money, but I do believe just begin, write what you believe, you know, speak what you believe.
And if you are good or you find something good, you know, people will find you. It's not going to happen for everyone. That's the tragic thing. There’re fantastic painters in the world today that will never be recognized. Um, simply because they don't catch that break. They don't, you know, they don't find that influencer, the audience doesn't locate them.
And that's just a tragedy of creating things. If you're entering the creative business, you want to make things, you have to acknowledge that it is not a weekly paycheck and there are no guarantees and you are pursuing something that is hard and unlikely and you know, an uphill climb every single day, but that's the job.
And if you don't love that idea, there's a million jobs you can go and get that. You will probably be happy doing that. Have great, a great deal, more security, or you do what I do. Do a whole bunch of things, have a teaching job, have a business, have a consulting career, and then make a lot of stuff and hope for the best.
Ash Roy:
Right. Which is a great way to do it. Actually, a creator that I greatly admire and I'm proud to call a friend is Derek Sivers. And he was actually here in Australia a couple of years ago. I don't know if you've come across his work, but he, I have. Okay. So he is someone who does not even think about SEO when he writes, he writes remarkable stuff, but he writes a lot.
And the stuff that makes it into his books, I dare say is a very, very filtered version of it. You know, he's written a book called How To Live. I've read every one of his books and his book, how to live is very self-contradictory on many levels, but he thinks that's one of his best works. And after having read it the second time, I think it probably is too, but the first time it didn't really land for me.
Another great creator who I never of course met, but I would have loved to is Prince. I don't know if you ever enjoyed his music, but
Matthew Dicks:
yes, absolutely. The guy was just incredible.
Ash Roy:
Who do you think he created for? Did he create for himself or for his audience?
Matthew Dicks:
Prince. It's interesting. He gave away just as many songs as he performed himself.
Ash Roy:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he still got them in the vault. They're still getting released.
Matthew Dicks:
Yes. Yeah. There's still songs. You know, I think he was, I think he was creating for music, I think he was creating for the world. I think he was creating things that he liked the sounds of, and then there were moments when he realized, this sounds like me, and moments when he probably thought, this isn't really for me.
This is a fantastic song that I've written, but I think it would sound better. You know, through the voice and the artistry of someone else. So, you know, I suspect like me, he would sit down and say, what sounds interesting me today to me today. And when he was done, then he had to make the choice. Will I perform this now?
Will I put it in a vault? Cause I love it, but don't want to do it right now. You know, very similarly as a storyteller, I am collecting stories of my life. You know, there was a time when I was worried, I might run out of stories, and now I have a bank of hundreds of stories that I want to tell about me that I will never have the time to fully tell every one of them.
And so, I have a vault of stories that are not yet crafted, but sort of like small blurbs to remind me what it is. And sometimes I find an idea and I say, I must do this today. And then there are some that I say, this is fantastic, but I do not want to do this today. You know, and if it was possible, you can't do this in personal storytelling, but there might be moments in my life where I say, this story would be better told by someone else.
And perhaps someday that'll happen, you know, in the unlikely event I die someday.
Ash:
Yeah,
Matthew Dicks:
Maybe my children will tell my untold stories on my behalf. And that will be lovely too. But make as many ideas as you can, and then we'll see where they go.
Ash Roy:
So. this is a great segue into something I wanted to cover in this.
Uh, episode and that is, uh, chapter three Homework for Life from Storyworthy. Could you tell us in brief how that works? I love how you've explained it in your book, particularly in this thing. I don't know if you can see it, but it's got this table and you literally lay out how the entries you've put into your diary, which is, I found to be very helpful because you literally explain how you come up with your homework for life.
So do you want to just talk our audience through it?
Matthew Dicks:
Yeah. So, you know, more than 10 years ago, I was running out of stories to tell on stages and I didn't want to be one of those people who told the same story every night or repeated stories. And so, in an act of desperation, really, and because I'm an elementary school teacher and my inclination is to give homework to solve problems, I gave myself this homework assignment, which is at the end of every day.
Although quite honestly, now it's during the day as well, but originally at the end of every day, I'm going to reflect on my day. And write down the most story worthy moment that happened to me, not in full because that is journaling and or a diary, let's say, and I don't believe in those. I mean, it's fine if you're doing them one of them.
I write a blog post every day for 19 years, so I believe in that. But I don't believe everyone's capable of doing that or that they have the capacity of for doing that. So I believe in small things that become habits. And so, I took an Excel spreadsheet. I have two columns. The A column has the date, and I stretched the B column across the screen.
And it's in the B column that I write down the story. So, I only have room for, let's say, three to five sentences to capture a moment. The prompt I really gave myself, which sounds odd, but it worked. I said to myself, if someone kidnapped my family, and they would not give them back to me unless I told a story about something that happened today, what would the story be?
Even if I had a day that truly was sort of bereft of stories, what would be the uninteresting thing that I would take to the stage? It's weird now because now I work for the hostage negotiation unit for the FBI. So now I actually think about people being kidnapped. But in that process, my goal was to find one new story per month.
And I thought that would be extraordinary. Instead, I discovered, and not just me, tens of thousands of people all over the world have discovered that our lives are filled with stories. That things happen to us every single day that either go noticed and forgotten or more often because we're not paying attention, they go unnoticed.
Moments of real meaning, whether it's something your child says or something you see or something you think for the first time or something you do that is unexpected or surprising or delightful or tragic. Our days are filled with these moments and we just allow them to sort of slip through our fingers and be forgotten.
And that is why we talk about how time flies, which it does not. All you have to do is ask someone incarcerated if time flies. And it does not right. It feels like a time flies for us because it goes unaccounted for so, you know if I asked you to Tell me how many days you can really genuinely remember from 2018 Right, if you're really good, you might remember 50 days from 2018 If I give you your calendar to assist you might get to 100 but what that means is you've taken a 365-day Year.
And you've reduced it to 50 days, which is why it felt like it flew by not because it did, but because you're not allowing yourself to take account of all the things and all the time that you're living. So, homework for life is a quick five minute at the end of the day way of recognizing that this day was worth living and therefore it is also worth remembering.
And so over time, what happened for me and what happens for people is my my, my lens, my lens widened. I started to see things that I used to not see and through that process, I now, I now find a lot, you know, the difference between when I wrote story worthy, I was finding about 1. 8 moments per day and story style, which I think I published maybe seven years later.
Now I find about 7. 6 moments per day and it's not because my life is more interesting. It's simply because I see more than I did before and seeing more makes me feel like my life is more full and time has slowed down and every day feels just a little more luxurious than it felt before. So even if you don't plan on telling stories, you should do homework for life.
To slow that time down, to recognize your life and to honor it for what it is, rather than what most people do, is we just simply walk through it, failing to, you know, pick up the interesting pieces along the way.
Ash Roy:
I have a question for you, Matthew. As you were speaking, I was thinking about my second, my more recent conversation with Seth Godin, I'll link to that in the description.
One of the things he said to me was, we're all really telling ourselves stories and the story we tell ourselves determines the choices we make. And, you know, it's a lens we're putting on experiences. But here's another thought that came to me as you were speaking, and that was, do you think that when you start doing this, the homework for life, you are effectively becoming a co-creator in your own life and you're authoring your own story and therefore being a little bit more involved, invested in your life and the evolution of you, as opposed to what most of us are.
Now, more liable, likely to do given the proliferation of social media and screens where we just go through life in this stupor. Do you think that that co creation element is what creates that agency and that feeling of living?
Matthew Dicks:
Yes. I think that storytellers are self-centered in a positive way. Meaning we afford ourselves opportunities to think about ourselves.
There was a day a few years ago, I'm playing golf with my friend, Steve. It's a hundred degrees out, legitimately a hundred degrees. And we're climbing this hill after the sixth hole. And Steve reaches for a Gatorade in his golf bag. And I don't have one in mine. I'm carrying my bag because that's the kind of person I am.
I left my Gatorade in the car. So Steve turns behind to me and he sees I'm suffering and he says, Hey, I have an extra Gatorade. Do you want it? And I say, no. Which is crazy because he has an extra one and it's a hundred degrees and I'm dying, but I say no and as it happens, I think that was dumb. And so, when we finish our round of golf, we get back in the car Steve drives away and what happens to almost everyone in the world is they also drive away right behind Steve but I'm a storyteller and I'm genuinely Interested in myself.
And so rather than driving away I turn the air conditioning on and I say to myself, why did you say no to the Gatorade? That was so weird You and I don't drive away. I sit there and decide to figure out why I said no to the Gatorade. No, it doesn't always happen quickly. I just had a moment sort of come to reality after 10 years of pondering it quite literally, it suddenly hit me.
But on that day, it took 10 minutes. I sat in my car for 10 minutes and then it hit me. I grew up food insecure as a child. I was hungry all the time. And when you're hungry as a child, the worst thing that can ever happen is to have someone discover you're hungry because being hungry. Is shameful, even though it doesn't make any sense.
That's how you feel as a kid. If I don't have enough food to eat, I'm ashamed that I don't have enough food to eat. So, the last thing you ever tell anyone is that you're hungry. And as a result, when people offer you food as a kid, you always say no. Cause to accept the food would be an acknowledgement that you are hungry.
And also, you know, as a kid, you can never reciprocate. So, if you take a Twinkie from a friend at lunch, you know, you're never going to have an extra Twinkie to give back. And so, you train yourself to say no to all offers of food. And on that day on the golf course, I was a 42-year-old man. And I recognize that for my entire life, I have been saying no to the offer of food, despite the fact that today I have a full refrigerator and pantry with plenty of food and I can reciprocate whenever I need to, I had fallen into a pattern.
I came home. I told my wife and she said, you know what? It's true. You always reject the offer of food. And I said, I'm not doing it because I'm not hungry. It turns out I'm not doing it because I'm still a 10-year-old boy feeling ashamed about not having a Gatorade because I left it in the car. And so, because I afforded myself the 10 minutes that it took to think about myself in a really deep and meaningful way, now my life has changed.
Now I accept the offer of food when it is given to me. Now I have released some of the shame that I have been unknowingly carrying since I was 10. But what most people do is they move past that moment in their life. They have an opportunity and even a recognition that something odd happened there.
Right? Why did I make that decision? Why did I think that thing? And rather than affording themselves the time to think about it, they just go to the grocery store and buy the milk that their wife asked them to pick up. And they head home and muggle. And that moment's lost forever. And I think that is what the storyteller does.
The storyteller makes meaning from their life. By examining it and then taking the things that they glean and creating a story that they can now share with the world, which gives themselves understanding of themselves and also affords people the opportunity to sort of learn from the wisdom of the fool who is standing on stage saying for 42 years of my life, I've been refusing the offer of food because apparently I never grew So yeah, I think that When you're telling stories about yourself, you are sort of a co-creator, meaning you are harvesting the stories of your life to bring to other people, but more importantly, to bring to yourself the first and most important audience member for every story you'll ever tell is yourself.
And quite often, many of those stories will only be told to yourself. They are not for the stage or even your loved ones. They are just for you, but they're just as valuable.
Ash Roy:
There's a few things I want to say to that. First of all, I want to say, Matthew, if I could reach through the screen and give you a huge hug, I would, I don't want to make this weird, but I really found your story disarming and very endearing partly because I've been through similar stuff.
I've experienced severe insecurity, not food insecurity, but severe insecurity. And I could relate to a lot of what you said. Now I'm feeling a little bit emotional, but I'm not going to go down that path for now because I want to say a couple of other things. One is, you have found a way to practice a form of what I consider to be self-awareness.
And that's essentially what meditation or mindfulness is. And Productive Insights actually was created around the time when I was listening to Zencast. Zencast came from the Insight Meditation Center. And I couldn't decide whether I wanted to write about productivity or mindfulness, so I just went with mindfulness.
Productive insights, and luckily the URL was available, so here we are. As a student of storytelling that I have been of yours now for about, say, six weeks, I noticed you use certain devices in the story you just told about the golf course. So I'm going to try and unpack that. My initial plan was to try and get you to tell a story and construct one for our audience live on this call so they can do it.
But let's see if I can deconstruct your story just for fun and you tell me how I go. You're the teacher. I'm the student. Right? So, so far, I only know three core principles. So, bear with me, be kind, but the core principles I've learned so far, start with location, speak in the present tense and build your story around a five second transformation.
So, you started with the location golf course. You switched to present tense. You said, I'm in the golf course. I'm with this guy and he, he's, he offers me a Gatorade. The rest of it was in present tense. And the five second transformation was maybe in the car. I'm not sure where it happened, but the transformation was the realization that you grew up with food insecurity and to admit food insecurity to somebody else is a bad thing, but also it is to admit that to yourself.
Now, the reason location matters are because if somebody else has been on a golf course, which most people listening to this probably have, they will imagine themselves in the golf course. So, you have that connection with them. Speaking in the present tense, it's like a time machine because if I speak in the present tense and you are consuming the story 10 years from now on a YouTube video, you're still consuming it in your present tense.
So, we are meeting in that moment. We are also meeting at a location that we have both shared, albeit different versions of that location, your golf course, my golf course. And we've all had transformations. And if we happen to relate to that transformation, that story really lands. Now throwing it a bit of, in a bit of anthropology here, the reason stories work as well as they do is because I believe we are genetically programmed to survive around storytelling because the written word entered, entered the Human civilization pretty recently.
And for a long time, all communication, you know, there's a watering hole. Don't go there because the woolly mammoth lives there. And all that stuff was handed down from generation to generation via stories. [00:38:00] Uh, and that is built into our DNA. So is status, which is another conversation. But if you didn't have status, you got kicked out of the tribe and you died a painful death.
So you always had to maintain status.
Matthew Dicks:
Well, yes, I, I tell stories in present tense. For the reasons you described, uh, there's actually a recent study that showed that Amazon product reviews written in the present tense were more well received than Amazon product reviews written in the past tense. The present tense makes it feel like it's happening now.
It's more visceral. It also oddly affords you the opportunity to shift to the past tense when you are thinking about the past. So it allows the audience to sort of understand how time is traveling a little easier. By giving you access to both tenses. I actually switched to past tense when I was in the car thinking about my childhood, because now you understand where in the past, I don't have to sort of signal it as clearly because you can feel it happen.
I say golf course because I hate adjectives and storytelling. And so I know, even if you've never been on a golf course, you know what it looks like. So if I say golf course, you take the one that you have in your mind, essentially as a storyteller. What I do most of the time is I leverage the images and the memories that you already have.
And I take those. So I could describe that location on the golf course with great precision. I know exactly where I was. I've been on that golf course a thousand times, but I just say golf course. Cause I don't want to, I don't want to follow my story up with adjectives in an attempt to bring verisimilitude to my story.
I don't need you to see my golf course. And so that helps to activate imagination. Its why people tell me all the time they can see my stories in their mind's eye. How do you do it? And I always say, I don't use adjectives. I choose nouns that you can already see that I can steal from your brain because you see them better than anything that I could ever describe.
You know, one of the things I think that's important about that story to keep in mind is so often people think something fantastic or interesting has to happen in order for a story to really work. The moment that actually I experienced my five second moment, the moment of realization happens while I'm sitting behind a motionless car, enjoying air conditioning.
And then it hits me. So, it wasn't like I was doing something interesting when the moment took place. Most of the stories I tell, most of the moments I experience in my life, if you're watching me as I experience that moment, you would never know that I've suddenly shifted my thinking in a new and fundamental way.
Because everything that happens that's interesting to us tends to happen between our ears, inside our heads. And so people are always thinking, I don't have stories to tell because nothing interesting happens to me. What they're really saying is, interesting things happen to me, but I'm not doing anything when they happen.
And that doesn't mean it's not worth telling. Most of the things that are interesting that happen to me, no one knows anything's happening because I'm not actually doing anything interesting. You know, when my son says something to me that shifts the way I think about him for the rest of my life, No one sees that shift.
And that's the beauty of storytelling. I always say, what you're thinking and what you're feeling are the most important elements of a story, because they're the two things that no one ever has access to, unless you're willing to share it. We can all see what you do and what you say, but we can't see what you're thinking and feeling.
That is something you have to reveal to us. And those are the elements that people are drawn to in stories, the parts that we can't have access to. In an ordinary sense, unless someone is willing to stand on a stage or sit across from us at the dinner or write down on a page. So those are what the things we're looking for.
But everything you said was correct. The beginning and the end of my story are in relation to each other. I'm a person who needs a drink in the beginning of the story and rejects it. And at the end of the story, I come to understand why I reject that drink and how I now have shifted my thinking in life in a new and positive way.
So. Yes, you did a good job of analyzing what I didn't really plan to be a story. I mean, you know, it is a story, but it's funny how even when I'm sort of not attempting to artfully tell a story, but just sort of relate a moment to someone. All of the strategies immediately kick in. And I'm still doing the thing that I would do if I was performing on a stage.
Ash Roy:
Your stage performances are remarkable. There are two stories that really moved me. The one about when you buy the Christmas presents for your friends, and it was a bit weird how you're, that was just so endearing, but the turns that it took and where it ended, it were remarkable. And the sadness that I felt when your folks, I don't want to give the story away, but we discovered your friends were your family.
Uh, I relate to that a lot as well. The other story is the spoon of power. I mean, the way that starts is remarkable. And it's, in fact, it's so much less dramatic. In its inherent nature, but it is so much more powerful by virtue of the fact that it is so pedestrian. So maybe we'll circle back to those things.
I don't know if we have enough time for it. There are so many other devices you talk about in your book story cell. I've got them all here. They've got a whole library here.
Matthew Dicks:
Thank you.
Ash Roy:
So. You talk about things like, you know, backpacks and crystal balls and callbacks and stuff. How important are all these other things?
Are those three things fundamental? Or do you think all these other devices are important too?
Matthew Dicks:
Well, I tell people that unlike long division, where if you make a mistake, the answer is wrong. Storytelling isn't like that at all. I say, we're going to, we're stacking our strategies. So if you learn today to start telling stories in the present tense, you'll be a better storyteller, regardless of what else you happen to be doing.
Okay. And so stacking those strategies will eventually make you a better storyteller, regardless of whether you're using all of them or not. I do think that people have this weird belief that anyone has any interest in what they have to say. I'm constantly telling people, no one wants to hear anything you have to say unless you give them reason to listen.
That is a belief that I don't think most human beings have. I know that the higher you climb the corporate ladder, the less that belief is. Exists. It's odd that people think I'm now going to stand on a stage at the Javits center and everyone's going to want to listen. I'm going to, I'm going to have an all hands today.
And because I'm the boss or because I'm at the end of the conference table, everyone's attention is directed at me. I genuinely, authentically, 100 percent assume that even right now, your podcast audience doesn't want to hear anything I have to say, unless I'm trying to give them a reason to listen, which I'm relentlessly doing at all times.
And so those things that you've described, those strategies, those are means of entertaining, and I do think they're important. You know, I think there's lots of ways to entertain an audience. One of them is suspense and surprise and humor and stakes. I also think you can be genuinely entertaining by providing immediately actionable information that people can take away and feel better about themselves.
Or simply by giving a fact, that kind of fact that is offered that you can't wait to share with ten people. That can be entertaining. There's a whole bunch of ways to entertain an audience. But ultimately, if you're speaking to one person or a thousand people, unless it's your spouse, and even then sometimes not your spouse or, or your kids, but most of the time, not your kids, you have to find a way to be engaging and entertaining because no one wants to hear anything you have to say, unless you give them a reason to listen.
So, yeah, I think those strategies are important. The ones that you spoke to, Are sort of the structure of a story. And I do believe structure is kind of everything. If you don't start with good structure, your story is probably not going to work out very well for you. I think that structure allows for revision structure, allows for looking at a story as a series of scenes or blocks rather than, you know, 900 consecutive words assembled on a page.
When you think about your story as sort of sentences connected top to bottom, I think it's going to be really hard for you to tell a good story. Whereas if you think of a story in terms of blocks or scenes, structure, it's gonna be much easier for you. So, understanding structure is important, but laying into that structure the idea of I need to engage, hold the audience's attention, make them want to hear the next thing I have to say.
Those are all important things. And that's where those strategies come into play.
Ash Roy:
Any tips on how to introduce humor because you are a remarkably humorous person, particularly for someone who's been through as much trauma as you have. And by the way, I think the two are related because I think that's one of the reasons I have got a good sense of humor.
It's a survival mechanism. Do you have an approach to infusing humor into your stories?
Matthew Dicks:
Yeah, a couple things, you know, if you're a funny person, you can make most things funny and that's a mistake in storytelling. I do stand up and in stand up, I want to be funny most of the time. Okay. In storytelling, I want to be funny in a strategic way, meaning I'm going to deploy humor for a purpose in a story.
Like at the beginning of a story, I'll try to make the audience laugh because it activates chemicals in the brain that help me as a storyteller gain the audience's trust. You know, I will be funny. Just prior to something bad happening, because it makes the bad thing feel worse. I will deploy humor right after a terrible thing has happened to allow the audience to take a breath before moving on and to signal to the audience that I'm okay.
That what I just described to you was really unfortunate, but I made you laugh now so we can move on. There's lots of reasons to make things funny, and that's what the storyteller does. We try to deploy it strategically. I mean, the good news I always tell people about humor is there's no funny people in the world.
No one was born funny. You know, humor is also deploying strategies that are designed to create surprise that provoke a laugh, almost, you know, without any control. Laughter is not something people have much control over. When you laugh, you laugh because you are surprised in some way. And so, you can learn to deploy these strategies to some degree more than the other, but I can help people be funny all the time.
Now, oftentimes what it begins with is You're going to be funny in a prepared way, meaning when you're telling your story, delivering your keynote, you know, talking to your customers and you want to be funny, we can strategically learn how to be funny and build jokes. That doesn't mean sort of like when you're out with your friends, you're instantly going to be the funny guy, but eventually you will, because the same strategies that you'll learn to apply to a keynote are going to be the strategies you apply when you're bowling with your friends.
You want to crack a joke and suddenly you realize, Oh, this is the strategy that I can use to crack a joke. Once you learn the strategies of humor and you listen to a comedian, you can't help, but see the math behind what they're doing. You know, I teach people a strategy and humor, and then they'll email me and they say, I can't stop seeing it now.
It's everywhere. It's just the fact that you haven't seen it as a strategy. So often people think of humor as you were born funny. Some people are funny, some people are not. It is true that some people are funny and some people are not, but what it really is is some people understand the strategies of humor and some people don't.
And there are people who understand the strategies of humor on an unconscious, in an unconscious way. Sort of they've absorbed them because they're good listeners and they were desperate for attention, so they didn't have to deconstruct the strategies. The only reason I understand the strategies is because I have to teach them.
You know, I was one of those people who is an excellent listener, who was desperate for attention as a child and figured out ways to be funny through experimentation and listening. And then years later, when I had to teach it to, yeah, to survive. Yeah. And then years later, when I had to teach it to people, I started deconstructing it and saying, Oh, here's a strategy that I use.
Oh, here's another strategy that I use. Right. And I came up with 27 strategies that I inherently use to be funny. And, you know, as I. Sort of codified them. I saw them all over the world in the same way. Wow. That thing that I do, all the comedians do that, right? They do it to greater effect or lesser effect, but they're all using the same strategy.
So, I think humor is really important. I think it's underserved in the business world. I think that most people are afraid to use it because they're afraid to try to be funny and not sound funny. Uh, I think it is. I think it's a superpower that everyone has, but few people are daring enough to use.
Ash Roy:
Last question.
How do you believe storytelling helps business owners to build their brand and their business?
Matthew Dicks:
Oh, I mean, another hour I could give you all the ways.
Ash Roy:
Maybe we pick that up in the next conversation.
Matthew Dicks:
Yeah. I'll give you like just a couple right off the top of my head that I think are most important. I think that telling stories connects you to an audience in a deep and meaningful way.
And as a business owner who theoretically is trying to sell a product or service. You want to connect to customers in a way that causes them to trust you, believe in you, and, you know, believe that the things that you are making or offering are worth their time and money. So, connecting in a, in a powerful way is important.
I also think storytelling makes you unforgettable and, in a world, filled with content, the people who are remembered are the ones who get attention. You know, I might not need a ceiling fan today, But, if you provide me with an interesting story in, as a means of a commercial, let's say, or an advertisement about a ceiling fan, and I need a ceiling fan tomorrow, I am more likely to remember you because you've told me a story and stories are memorable.
So as a business owner, you want to be as memorable as possible to people. You want to be in their minds. You know, if you listen to me, tell my spoon of power story. You can't touch a spoon for a month without thinking about me every time you touch a spoon and probably for the rest of your life, every now and again, you will pick up a spoon and think about me, you know, and in the words of, you know, uh, an entrepreneur in Canada, who I was working with once, you know, he said, you should sell spoons.
He said, I want to buy a spoon right now. Put drill a hole, put it on a chain. You should be selling spoons after telling that story. What he was essentially saying is you took an ordinary kitchen object and turned it into something of great value that I now want to spend more money than it's actually worth to own.
Right. And that's what business owners need to do. They need to become connected to their audience, their customers. They need to be unforgettable to their audience and their customers. And then, you know, the third thing I'll say is when you tell a story about your product or service. Now people will understand it in a way that listing features will never allow anyone to understand anything rather than what most people do, which is they report on their product.
If you tell a story about your product, people understand the what and the why, what is it on a fundamental level and why do I need it? Quite often business owners spend a lot of time talking about the how, how does this work? How did I make it? How does it function? And no one cares about the how they care about what it is and why I need it.
And the best way to convey that is through a story.
Ash Roy:
Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast, Matthew. How can our audience find out more about you?
Matthew Dicks:
Uh, well, if they go to matthewdicks.com, that's a good place to start. And if you're interested more in storytelling than anything else, you can go to storyworthy.com and I have lots of free resources there.
A free academy that you can join, go through lots of lessons. It's, you know, free of charge, just courses that I have designed, all those kinds of things. So, both of those places are good places to start.
Ash Roy: This is a good place to, and you can get the book. Yes.
Matthew Dicks: You can get the book. I narrate it on audio. So, you can hear more of me hours and hours of me blathering on about storytelling.
Ash Roy:
Um, got the audio books as well. So, thank you so much for being on the show, Matthew. And, uh, we'll link to all this. We'll let you know when this is published.
Matthew Dicks:
Yeah, that'd be great. I'd be happy to share it on my channels as well.
Ash Roy:
Thank you.
