No DJ Techniques?

I am not a big fan of writing in my DJ. It's just not something I enjoy doing. I like thinking about my dreams but I have to force myself to write them down. I know from my own previous experience that forcing myself to keep a DJ makes me want to stop working towards LD's. Which is unfortunate.

I'm looking to find recall tool that works better for me.
Does anyone else practice LDing without a DJ. I can't imagine Monks keep a DJ...
How do you get around not keeping a DJ? What do you do instead?

Thanks!

So how many dreams can you actually remember from the past - as in years ago? Just a handful? I'm so glad I write mine down, otherwise most of them would just disappear into the black hole of oblivion. Reading through old journals is a delight - it's like going through boxes of stuff you had stored away and forgotten about but they bring back great memories.

One way would be a voice recorder. If nothing else you could keep your phone by the bed and record a video when you wake up but just to get the audio. Do it in the dark so you don't have to switch on a light and wake yourself up too much.

Ya I get that. I remember some of the more significant dreams from years ago but certainly not many of the day to day dreams.
The problem is that every time I force myself to keep up on my DJ I quit practicing. I wish it was enjoyable for me to DJ but unfortunately it's not. It's just not a sustainable practice for me. I'd rather do something sustainable but not as effective than the opposite.

I have seen people post here before that they don't DJ and have good results. I'm really interested in what they are doing.

I can definitely relate to that issue. Waking up in the middle of the night and actually write things down, I need like shitloads of motivation to do that and that's not my reality in the long run, - unfortunately.
I'm idle ear if people have anything else to come up with except voicerecording, because i'm not planning to freak my girlfriend out every single night.

I keep a DJ but I don't often write in it. I could usually LD fairly regularly (~5-7/week).

A dream recording device is most useful for remembering dreams after they have been recalled. However, one can certainly still develop dream recall skills by practicing recalling dreams without recording them. The recalled dreams might not be effectively remembered after a few hours, but the skill of recalling what previously happened upon waking up from dreams would still be exercised. Alternatively, I hear this skill can be exercised during the day by recalling what previously happened during the day.

Also, when speaking of improving the chance of lucid dreams, some who refer to the skill of dream recall are actually referring to the skill of being aware during the dreams themselves in order to potentially become lucid during them. This has little to do with remembering what previously happened and has more to do with being aware during the dreams themselves. Being aware of the dreams themselves is generally done through motivation. Some seem to think a dream journal is needed to motivate the dreamer to notice the dreams, but that is not case. A dream journal can offer this motivation, but so can an intention set before going to sleep, something like, "I look forward to my dreams tonight," or anything else that offers motivation to notice the dreams.

Thanks for the response Dolphin. I like the thought that a DJ offers motivation to be more aware during dreams. This fits pretty well with my own experiences.

If this is true we could think of a DJ as a gamification of dreaming, where the written dream is the achievement for good dreaming practice. Perhaps we could get a similar benefit with a point system. I could grade my dreams on how well I recall them (1 to 10 points), roughly how many minutes I remember, and how many dreams I can remember for the night. This way I can just write down three numbers instead of the tedium of journaling.

Successful people do what unsuccessful people aren't willing to. Enjoying something is irrelevant, since you'll get used to it if you do it long enough.

I've cycled through doing a DJ religiously, and not, several times, and every time I find that my general dream recall slowly diminishes after I stop writing, and improves when I do write. I'm not sure that it helps directly to get lucid, but it at least means that a lucid is not forgotten. Even though a lucid might be noticeably more memorable than a non-lucid, that memory still fades over time, and it is good to re-live lucids to give yourself a confidence boost during a dry spell. Re-reading previous lucids might actually help get you lucid again.

I use the Lucidity app on Android by the way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Goldenspark

I'm not sure that it helps directly to get lucid (...)

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Remembering your dreams helps you to get lucid directly since you know what to look for in dreams to become lucid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Goldenspark

I've cycled through doing a DJ religiously, and not, several times, and every time I find that my general dream recall slowly diminishes after I stop writing, and improves when I do write. I'm not sure that it helps directly to get lucid, but it at least means that a lucid is not forgotten.

I use the Lucidity app on Android by the way.

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I think your right. A DJ definitely helps me when I use it also. I just haven't been able to sustainable use it.
I don't think it's the physical writing that's helping. There has been research saying that we organize our thoughts better when we write them down. But it's not the physical pen and paper (or keyboard).

A DJ most likely just a tool we use to emphasize awareness during our dreams, help with motivation, track our progress, etc. It's these impacts of a DJ that are helping, not the DJ itself.

There has to be more than one effective tool with the same benefits. We are all different and different things work for different people. Look at how many induction techniques there are for example.

I would say that using a DJ to look for dream signs was still indirect, because there's another step from DJ to LD. There's another point about writing a DJ, and that is, you need to have a system to remember several dreams unless you're going to write in your DJ on every waking. I do this by going over my dreams successively, so I can remember several, and then write my DJ in the morning. It's more difficult at first, but gets easier as you practice it.
I don't want to have to wake up fully during the night to write each dream.....

I definitely enjoy having a DJ and I believe it helps immensely.

I understand that it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but lucid dreaming doesn't come naturally to all of us, so working hard to get there is part of it. So even if you dislike doing it, give it a try for at least a month. If you don't see any progress, then you might as well let it go. But if you DO see some improvement, then stick with it! :)

DJs can be rather tedious, I agree. But I've found the results worth it. The enjoyment I get from going back and reading about the cool things I did motivates me to keep journaling. The same thing is true of my waking-life journal. It's fun to read about the nostalgic things I did before, but I'm always disappointed when I come across sections where I was lazy and barely wrote anything and therefore no longer remember clearly what happened. So I do it with the realization that putting in a little extra effort now, even if I don't completely feel like it, will make me happier later.

Even then, I got to a point where I had massive dream recall every night, which was cool, but the time it took writing still got to be a bit too much. So I began to compromise a bit, mainly focusing on the most interesting and significant dreams, just enough to strike a reasonable balance between the time it takes and the quality of the entries.

Some have recommend techniques like “tagging” (I think it's called?) and such, where one just writes down short words and phrases about the dreams to help trigger their memory, without having to write about the whole dream. But I've heard others say that they ran into the problem of those brief notes becoming meaningless and useless to them years later after they've finally forgotten the dream. I recently went nearly ten years of keeping a DJ but never reading it, and when I finally did, I realized that I no longer recognized a large number of the dreams I wrote about. But at least I wrote about them in full and they were there. So I've never used such techniques; I've decided I'd rather go through the trouble to write them out in full, and also try to read over my DJ more often (that's why I'm going through the trouble, after all). You reap what you sow.