Thread: Prospective Memory - Has Anyone Found It Beneficial?

I found the PM exercises incredibly helpful, but I modified them fairly significantly from what LaBerge writes in ETWOLD. On days where I was very active in PM targets, I frequently got lucid that night.

I found the exercise as stated in ETWOLD had not enough practice. So I modified it:

• I set targets that I was almost 100% certain that I would encounter during the day
• chose targets that varied between: almost right away to a maximum of a few hours away, maybe once in a while set a "end of day" target but not very frequently
• maintained a sliding window of 4-5 targets at all times: when I realized I'd hit or missed one particular target, I immediately chose a new one: in this way I always had 4-5 outstanding active targets mixed between "probably soon" and "definitely later on"

I've gotten away from it and I think I need to return to it. Like I said, on those days I had around 10-12 targets (and was hitting most of them), I'd get lucid pretty reliably.

My personal opinion is that active PM goals keeps the brain's goal center activated, looking for clues to get lucid.

edit: I think it's important to tailor the day's targets to include ones that you're positive that you will encounter. Either that, or make a larger list of targets so that there's a lot of possibilities, so your goal center remains active.

Another important thing is to invest some time in memorizing each target: visualize encountering the target in a variety of possible scenarios, and include sight/sound/hearing/touch, all the senses, while visualizing the target occurring and repeating your mantra to yourself while you do so, e.g., "I'm dreaming"