Q & A with MATTHEW DICKS, Author of Someday is Today
Someday — when the kids are grown, when work lightens up, when I win the lottery — I am going to start that business, become a yoga teacher, write that book, develop that app, paint that picture, finish my degree, pick up that musical instrument.
There’s a Japanese proverb: “The day you decide to do it is your lucky day.” But how do we make the decision to actually start and complete creative things? This is the question that author and nationally acclaimed storyteller Matthew Dicks explores in Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life.
We hope you’ll enjoy this Q & A with Matthew about the book.
Tell us about Someday is Today and what inspired you to write it.
I wear a lot of hats: Author. Elementary school teacher. Storyteller. Consultant. Speaking coach. Minister. Wedding DJ. Not to mention father, cat owner, husband, poker player, and mediocre gofer.
I do a lot of things. As a result, the question that I am asked most frequently is, “How do you do all the things that you do?” This book seeks to answer that question.
I have spent much of my life devising strategies that have allowed me to make my dreams come true while still finding plenty of time to be a normal human being, with plenty of time for friends, family, Netflix, and laundry. Some relate to the efficient use of time. Others focus on maintaining positivity and momentum in a world so often awash with negativity. Still others ask you to examine the way you make decisions in your life to ensure that your choices lead to the best possible outcomes.
Lots of people dream of doing something great someday – writing a book, building a business, making art, traveling the world, changing the fortunes of those less fortunate – but most people die having never fulfilled their dreams.
It’s an ongoing tragedy for so many people who believe that there is an endless supply of somedays. This book seeks to end the tragedy of someday by helping people turn somedays into today.
How important is hope when it comes to the realization of our creative dreams?
Hope is critical to the success of the creator. Hopelessness leads to apathy and inaction. Unless you believe that today can be brighter and better than yesterday, there is little reason to move forward with purpose and no reason to be enthusiastic about the possibilities of the day and the future. Knowing and believing that things can get better, progress is possible, and dreams can come true is essential to anyone dreaming of doing anything worthwhile.
You say in the book that “someday” is might be your least favorite word in the English dictionary. Why is that?
“Someday” is an insidious word that allows people to put off their dreams to another day. The problem is that our supply of somedays is finite, but by the time most people recognize this, it’s too late.
What is the One-Hundred-Year-Old Plan and how can it help us live with out fear of regret?
The problem with decision making is that so often, we make decisions about how we spend our time and effort based upon the next hour, the day, the next week, the next month, and even the next year. This may feel good in the moment, but if we extend our view across a lifetime, we discover that making decision based upon short terms wants and needs often leads to a life filled with unfulfilled dreams and endless regret.
The One-Hundred-Year-Old Plan asks you to look to the future when making a decision about how to spend your time and effort. Rather than relying on the version of yourself existing in the moment, look ahead to the one-hundred-year old version of yourself – the version who is looking back upon your life and judging the way you’ve spent your time – and ask that version of yourself how they would like you to spend the next hour. That version of yourself knows that friends and family comes before Netflix. Working towards your dreams is more important than time spent on social media or video games.
It hard to make decisions based upon the here and the now. But when we ask our future self what we want from our current self, answers are often much more obvious and decisions are better made.
What advice do you have to offer those whose inner perfectionist is preventing them from starting a creative project?
Understand that creative people make terrible things all the time. In order to do something good or even great, you must make mistakes. You must produce poor results. You must accept the fact that every single person on this planet who has ever made something great has also made many, many bad things. Perfection almost always equates to inaction. The need for perfections causes dreams to remain perpetually unfulfilled. As the creator of things, we must simply begin, even if our first second, and millionth steps are miserable and better forgotten. It’s better to be moving forward, making terrible things, than standing still and making nothing.
What is the most important thing you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope that people finish the book believing that success is attainable, dreams can come true, and progress is possible. All of the things we want from life can be achieved if we focus on how we live each day. Our lives are an assemblage of every tiny decision that we make, and the course of our lives are determined in great part by this assemblage of tiny decisions. Small changes in how we live, piled atop one another and stretched out over time, can yield enormous results. My book seeks to help people see those choices more clearly and make these choices more strategically. There are no magic pills, but there are a multitude of small, significant ways that we can improve our chances of success every hour of every day. I hope my readers believe this and begin today.
Someday is today.
Matthew Dicks is the author of Someday Is Today and nine other books. A bestselling novelist, nationally recognized storyteller, and award-winning elementary schoolteacher, he teaches storytelling and communications at universities, corporate workplaces, and community organizations. Dicks has won multiple Moth GrandSLAM story competitions and, together with his wife, created the organization Speak Up to help others share their stories. Visit him online at www.MatthewDicks.com.
Excerpted from the book from Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life. Copyright ©2022 by Matthew Dicks. Printed with permission from New World Library.