Thread: Best Methods of Dream Journaling?

A lot of people seem to take quick notes during the night and then flesh them out first thing in the morning, but I've found that I forget a lot of the little details if I do it that way (ymmv). I hated handwriting in a journal, so eventually I went electronic. Before bed, I disable my tablet's lock screen and pull up a notepad application, then put a Bluetooth keyboard near my bed. When I wake up, I can just grab the keyboard and type out my dreams without moving at all. I don't even need to have my eyes open, since I don't look at the tablet at all (when I first start typing I make sure the tablet wakes up, but I never actually look at the screen). Since I haven't flooded my eyes with light (either a normal light to illuminate a journal or a screen's nasty backlight), falling back asleep is usually easy.

Since I'm a good typist, I can type out my dreams in complete detail in just a few minutes. In the morning, I take what I wrote over night, clean it up (typos are unavoidable when you're not looking at the screen), add any more details that come to mind, and post it.

I don't write anything during the night usually (I'm delicate about it because of my insomnia - don't want to mess up a good sleep )
What I do is cement the dreams to memory by recalling as much as I can and going over them a few times after waking from a dream.
Then in the morning I spend like 10-30 minutes writing them out, since my understanding is that writing them physically makes more connections to the memory in your brain or something...

Then I type them up later (sometimes in the evening) onto dreamviews Doing this means I can add anything I missed and clean up the whole thing and also re-cement the dream again. Also putting tags onto a dream allows for easy dream sign analysis (a recent discovery for me haha ). I imagine a lot of people probably don't do it this way, but my goal is to maximize my dream recall by using my memory to recall as much detail as I can.

I also write the date, add a title to the dream, number the journal entry (like: 16th of July. #23 - Eiffel Tower Fireballs/Jesus likes doing backflips). Then I add a time next to the title of the dreams. I just write in first person, past tense I think:

Dream 1 - Eiffel Tower Fireballs (04 30)
"I remember climbing up the Eiffel tower and throwing fireballs. Suddenly I was ... etc".

There's probably better ways out there, like Nazrax you could type them up really quickly but I don't have a tablet.

Hope this helps!
P.S. Fairy Tail is cool

Originally Posted by Nazrax

pull up a notepad application, then put a Bluetooth keyboard near my bed. When I wake up, I can just grab the keyboard and type out my dreams without moving at all.

That's an awesome idea. Thanks for sharing it.

Sadly, I suppose, the best way I've found to record my dreams is to write them down, pen to paper, in as much detail as I can.

There is something about the action of writing that seems to send the dream straight to (accessible) long-term memory in a way that no other method does. And that is where you want it to wind up, isn't it? I think that "someting" is an actual physiological process and not just my opinion, BTW, though I can't back that up with anything.

I have found that, for me, just writing down dream cues (keywords) doesn't seem to do the trick, memory-wise: I journaled this way for a about a year back in the 1980's, and now I am left with a stack of journals from that era filled, essentially, with gibberish (yet "full narrative" journal entries from years before that instantly spark vivid memories). I think I did the keyword thing for two reasons: I was overly confident in my dream recalling ability, and I was profoundly lazy.

Because typing and dictating apparently do not have the same connection to memory processing as manually writing, you would do well I think to record as many details as you possibly can, should you choose such a method, as the electronic record you create may be all you will have of that dream.

So: from my experience, Blaed, by writing out your dreams in a narrative manner, you might already be journalling in the most effective way; perhaps also the most annoying, painstaking, and time-consuming manner as well, given the electronic options available these days, but the most effective So if you can manage to simply write down everything you remember as soon as possible (I rarely write down dreams in the middle of the night, BTW, as the good ones -- especially LD's -- tend to linger in my mind until morning), you will likely reap the greatest long-term rewards from your dream journal.

I know that might sound depressing and tedious, but it's what I got. But don't worry, as I'm sure someone will
post shortly to disagree with me and list handy shortcuts!

Thanks for the replies everyone! Gonna take probably stick to the narrative side of DJing and hope you all stay lucid!

Originally Posted by Sageous

Sadly, I suppose, the best way I've found to record my dreams is to write them down, pen to paper, in as much detail as I can.

There is something about the action of writing that seems to send the dream straight to (accessible) long-term memory in a way that no other method does. And that is where you want it to wind up, isn't it? I think that "someting" is an actual physiological process and not just my opinion, BTW, though I can't back that up with anything.

I have found that, for me, just writing down dream cues (keywords) doesn't seem to do the trick, memory-wise: I journaled this way for a about a year back in the 1980's, and now I am left with a stack of journals from that era filled, essentially, with gibberish (yet "full narrative" journal entries from years before that instantly spark vivid memories). I think I did the keyword thing for two reasons: I was overly confident in my dream recalling ability, and I was profoundly lazy.

Because typing and dictating apparently do not have the same connection to memory processing as manually writing, you would do well I think to record as many details as you possibly can, should you choose such a method, as the electronic record you create may be all you will have of that dream.

So: from my experience, Blaed, by writing out your dreams in a narrative manner, you might already be journalling in the most effective way; perhaps also the most annoying, painstaking, and time-consuming manner as well, given the electronic options available these days, but the most effective So if you can manage to simply write down everything you remember as soon as possible (I rarely write down dreams in the middle of the night, BTW, as the good ones -- especially LD's -- tend to linger in my mind until morning), you will likely reap the greatest long-term rewards from your dream journal.

I know that might sound depressing and tedious, but it's what I got. But don't worry, as I'm sure someone will
post shortly to disagree with me and list handy shortcuts!

You're not alone, I too write my dreams, pen to paper, since the beginning of my journey in lucid dreaming. You're right, writing something down facilitates memory consolidation. Besides, I find it actually pleasing to have my dreams written down on a sheet of paper than on the computer. That it is tedious and requires strong dedication, no question about it, but in the end it's definitely worth the effort. Recalling dreams is vastly improved with this, to the point that my mind gets so used to the practice that it's always a guarantee that I remember at least a dream, every single night.

And again I have to agree with you about writing in a narrative manner, with the focus being in the little details of your dream experience. It simply is the most effective way to dream journal. I've seen my dreams not only increase in frequency, but also in quality, in how vivid the dream is.

Sometimes the old ways can be more useful than the new ways we have nowadays. The practicality of these practices are still of great value.