Thread: Are voice recorders as effective as writing?

I've heard that, if you don't want to use physical dream journal, you can use a voice recorder instead. Is it as effective as an actual dream journal, for enforcing dream recall?

Dream journals help because they give you a consistent intent for remembering your dreams as vividly as possible. When you remember your dreams, you sift through each memory and write down as many of the significant details as you can.

I don't see why it wouldn't work with a voice recorder. The only difference is that it may be easy to fall into a trap of not elaborating as much. Tell the story of your dreams as if you're trying to tell it to a friend and help him relive the experience.

The other problem is it can be tougher to go through dreams signs and everything. While a dream journal essentially lays out all the info at once for you, the introduction of audio imposes a timeline, which can't be searched through as easily with traditional web browsing methods (aka Ctrl + F).

It's really a matter of preference and how you organize everything.

Happy journaling!

Originally Posted by niteLite

The only difference is that it may be easy to fall into a trap of not elaborating as much. Tell the story of your dreams as if you're trying to tell it to a friend and help him relive the experience.

How much detail would you recommend for writing? I"ve always written like a few key words, and only a couple times come up short, but it's really aggravating when I do.

I know that writing a mantra down seems to be more effective than just thinking it. I think when you wright something down, you have to go over multiple times as you wright to make sure you don't forget it. Maybe it's different with dream journaling than mantras.

i think this can work for taking notes in the middle of the night, but what you save in time in the middle of the night you will need to spend listening back over the dreams and ruminating on them and / or typing them out.

I personally would only use it during the night for notes. I wouldn't use it as a full time journal due to not being able to go though dreams fast and it would be hard to organize it. I use the dream journal program on this site but would rather right them down and have a book but that would just take to much time.

Exactly.

Looking at a written dream journal you can easily scan over it looking for certain words or whatever. With a recording you'd pretty much just have to listen to the whole thing. Even better would be a DJ written as a text file, so you can search for keywords etc, tag entries as lucid or not, or add other tags to easily cross-index everything. But yes, a recorder might be good for initial notes when you're planning to go back to sleep. That way you don't have to turn on a light and wake yourself up too much. Then in the morning write it out better.

Writing is an action and is likely to cause you to remember it more, and get more "into it". I would think, therefore, it is the better method.

A mixture though, record now, write later, may even be more effective, as it causes more detail (faster recording) and more thought (rethink during later writing). Conversely, perhaps, the sooner the write, the stronger the affect.

So, i don't know. But my feeling is to not give up the writing.