Do you write down every dream in detail?

^^ Aw shucks! Thanks for the nice words. Something I realized that I don't think I've communicated yet about how I recall: when I'm doing mental recall, and I go over and over and over the scenes and the dreams, and I assign a word or two to each one (tags), but then as I go over the list of tags, when I say to myself a tag that represents a dream, I also quickly visualize the major scenes of that dream in rapid-fire succession.

So it's sort of like: access memory, receive a rush of scenes, I sort them into separate dreams, assign them tags, then say <tag1> <visualize scenes1>, <tag2> <visualize scenes2>, … over and over until I feel they're well established. Every once in a while a new dream or a new scene in a dream I already have tagged will pop up, and I just keep going until I receive no new scenes after several minutes. This process can take quite a long time if there are a lot of scenes. I don't worry about getting in to a comfortable position, but once there, I don't move much more, and I do keep my eyes covered from light all the while.

I remember the imagery, kind of like photographic memory I guess, except for dreams.

On a side note...

One thing I'm beginning to notice is being well rested has a rather large impact on my recall. That is, if I skimp on sleep my recall will fall off somewhat the following night and perhaps another. Less noticed awakenings and more fragments and shorter dreams.

So that's probably even more important than the method and technique of actual recording of dreams.

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Originally Posted by JustASimpleGuy

One thing I'm beginning to notice is being well rested has a rather large impact on my recall. That is, if I skimp on sleep my recall will fall off somewhat the following night and perhaps another. Less noticed awakenings and more fragments and shorter dreams.

So that's probably even more important than the method and technique of actual recording of dreams.

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Good point! Though in my experience so far if I've had less sleep one night then REM rebound the next night seems to outweigh any possible negative affects on recall caused by not being well rested.

I'm now wondering, for those of you that don't use tagging or some other quick way of making DJ notes, what do you do when you wake in the night with say a very detailed and long recalled dream, but you know you have to get up early in the morning and so don't want to lose the sleep writing the dream in full there and then? Do you then use a 'compromised' journal method? Or some memory trick? Do you just write it out anyway and lose the full nights sleep? Or do you sometimes just accept that you don't always have the time to write down every dream and go straight back to sleep?

In my case I think I lose some of the benefit of REM rebound because the night after being deprived of sleep I usually sleep straight through until morning. For me I find if I don't wake up a few times throughout the night I have horrible recall.

I also wonder how much of an impact smoking has for me? I know nicotine is a REM suppressant. Next week I have a scheduled doctor appointment. Haven't had a checkup or doctor visit in almost 5 years and I also want to give Chantix a try. I'm very interested to see what impact that has, as I know Chantix can induce very vivid dreams for some.

One thing I find helpful is to type your dreams. you can start with the basic dream layout and things that seem important to you. later if you want to add deatail, you can go back and edit directly into spaces you want to add to without having to erase of anything like that.

Here's an interesting article that might have some bearing on this topic.

The Benefits of No-Tech Note Taking - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education