real life carrying over into dreams

how long does it take for your waking life to carry over into your dreams? some people have the event from that day in there dream, and some people might have a delay. has anyone noticed a pattern or average time it takes? it could get usufull to know this if you are waiting for something in your dreams, like if you have been hightening your awareness and are expecting it to kick in in your dreams. or if something exciting happened and you think you could use it as a dreamsign a few nights later, it would be good to know when to expect it.

I would expect it the same night. Modern dream theory suggests we assimilate important events, while discarding the unimportant, during the next sleep cycle. What might seem like a delayed dream is actually the remnants of a thought that you might have had pertaining to an event that occurred days before.