Thread: Day Journal

Dreams are, by default, stored in the short-term memory compartment of your brain. By writing things down, you're telling your brain that you want it to be taken out of that sector and placed into the long-term memory compartment. I would imagine (no pun intended) that doing this for waking-life events would be pretty much the same process in terms of helping all round memories to be stored in the long-term bit.

Hi Transient - it might have been me who said that - I've mentioned keeping a day journal alongside a DJ several times in here.

Here's what I've found, as someone who has kept both for a long time and is also a writer and blogger.

When you write things down it forces you to think about them more deeply. The very act of finishing a sentence sometimes makes you think more deeply into something. While trying to figure out what you're going to write you stop and weigh ideas and correlate them, and this sorts them. Normally if you just wake up remembering a dream you might think no more deeply into it than "Wow, that was pretty cool!"

But when you write it down you analyze it piece by piece (I don't mean like psychological Dream Analysis, though it's basically the same thing on a much lesser scale). And of course the same applies to waking life - you write down things that seem important for whatever reason and it makes you think about them more than "the unexamined life".

When you think into something you activate the mind's 'pattern recognition' software, which is powerfully developed in humans, and is a large part of our intelligence.

Ok now - what are dreams made of? Day residue mostly, plus occasionally leftover emotional baggage (unresolved issues). So when you're analyzing your daily life AND your dream life, you begin to pay attention to the underlying patterns that affect both - to find the common threads.

At least this is what I believe.

Plus what you said - "practicing the recall of recent sensory information that helps with remembering dreams".

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

So when you're analyzing your daily life AND your dream life, you begin to pay attention to the underlying patterns that affect both - to find the common threads.

Thanks! It probably was your thread, I've never thought of the day journal as a way to analyze the days events as well as compile them. When I compare the two (day journal and dream journal) the dreams seem to be a disguised rewrite of the day. Hopefully I'll learn to see the "common threads" of my days and dreams.

I keep a waking journal as well. Actually, my dream journal started as an offshoot of my waking journal. For whatever reason, I decided to write down some interesting dreams I'd had when I was writing down the events of the day, and then I started writing down my dreams every day. Then I remembered something I'd read about good dream recall being important for lucid dreaming and, since I already had good dream recall anyway, I decided to try that too.

I can't say for certain that keeping a waking journal has helped me with dream recall, since I've always kept a waking journal when I've kept the dream one. But I do have a few observations to share.

My dream recall was actually pretty good when I was keeping my waking journal, before I started writing down my dreams. I'd remember dreaming on most days (I think). I know I didn't used to remember my dreams that often in the past, before I started keeping a waking journal. I probably used to remember dreaming once a week or once a month. However, I think the fact that I decided that my dreams are important to me around the time I started a waking journal is a major factor in my improved recall. I don't remember the order these events occurred in (good dream recall, starting a waking journal, deciding dreams are important), but I think they probably all occurred within a month or two of each other. All I know for sure is I wrote down my first dream about two months after I started my waking journal.

I started a waking journal because some else suggested it to me. I kept writing down my dreams after the first few times because I didn't want to forget them. My reason for keeping the waking journal turned into the same one for keeping a dream journal- so I won't forget. Day memories may not disappear within minutes or hours like dreams, but they disappear all the same. Perhaps in doing two things for the same purpose (to remember), each one reinforces the other? I know having the same purpose with the dream journal, which is more interesting to me, helps keep me motivated to keep doing the waking journal, at least.

Hi Midori - welcome to the journaling party!

It's definitely got something to do with putting ideas/memories into words. That must help to impress them into long-term memory. I find that, even if I don't write them down, I remember my dreams a lot better - for several days at least - if I think through them in words when I wake up, as if I'm telling the dream to a friend or something. In fact I need to write down the dreams from last night and the night before - they're still floating around in there.