Thread: My plan of attack for getting lucid!

Hey all,

It's happened again: I got all excited about lucid dreaming. I started reading a bit today about sleep cycles and tools that can help. I have a shiny android phone at my disposal with:

- tasker (very custimisable app that performs certain actions with certain triggers)
- accelerometer logger
- keeptrack: simple program helps you log specified things
- some notes database app

Ok, bear with me here. So now I have tasker setup to remind me to reality check during the day at random times. This only happens about 4 times a day. You guys think this is enough? Or should I willingly let my phone drive me insane with 250 daily reminders to be effective?

Next up, I made a button (with tasker again) on my phone that, when I press it right before I close my eyes, sets off a little program. This gives me 30min to fall asleep, and then starts going in 90min cycles. After each cycle except the first one, a short alarm sounds, shows a message "you're dreaming!" and starts recording one minute so that I can just start saying tidbits and keywords related to the dream I was just having. This way I don't have to move at all after waking up. Then I'm supposed to fall asleep again.

Next to this I'll put my "lights off" and "wake up" times in Keeptrack. This to somehow figure out how long I need to sleep and how long my sleep cycles are. I read somewhere you're supposed to try and wake up naturally, and then divide your sleeptime by a whole number of cycles so you can figure out how long your sleepcycles are (between 90min-110min). But is that really accurate? I mean, you have to take into account the time it takes to actually fall asleep right? How does one figure out how long that is?

I'll also run that accelerometer logger with the phone next to my pillow. See how much I move. Not sure if this is useful, reliable, or worth the effort at all, but hey, I'll give it a shot and see if it tells me something.

And finally, when I'll wake up in the morning, I can review my groggy mumblings and write out my dreams in the notes in full.

How does that sound, experts? Anything else I could try?

Ambitious. I'm not an expert but I am curious as to the results of this experiment. Post how it goes! Good Luck!

I have tasker on my phone as well, it never occurred to me to use it like you explained. Good idea!

Thanks If you want to set it up like I said be sure to check "Keep Awake" and keep the phone charging. Else it just goes on standby and doesn't trigger after the long Wait (will be fixed in next version)

So at least the whole setup worked last night. Have some movement data, although I think it's got huge gaps in it. The alarms pretty much all missed their targets. First one woke me up but I didn't remember much, and second and third I didn't even hear. 7h20min between going to sleep and waking up! Let's tweak it bit for tonight.

you should have one in about 2 weeks at this rate. remember dream recall is most important.


TRy to recollect what happened in your day before you go to bed. Helps for dream recall