I was just curious as to the differences in how people are dream-journaling. Do you have a digital journal, physical, or both? Do you write your dreams throughout the night, or only after waking up in the morning? What data besides the dreams themselves do you include in it? Do you have separate lists in other areas for dream goals / signs, or right in the journal? How do you study it, do you make notes or mark it up at all? Feel free to share anything about the process (even pictures of your journals!). Your response don't need to be limited by these questions. Looking forward to what you all have to say!
I personally use a digital app called "lucidity", as I record my dreams throughout the night upon natural awakenings. I type faster than I write, and if I don't immediately record the dream I just awoke from and instead wait until later when I finally wake up "for good" that morning, I'll have forgotten most of that dream. I just dim my phone brightness (with blue-light filter, color of the digital "page" set to grey for night mode). This works well and I am able to record a lot of details this way... I then transfer the digital dream to a physical notebook, handwriting it over again later in the day (when I have time at least, need to do that again soon).
This is my physical dream journal. Simple, but I love the golden trim of the pages, makes it seem magical or something haha. Funny enough, back in 2008 (I was 11!) I found a weeks worth of dreams! I didn't even know about lucid dreaming back then, guess I always was interested in dreams!
To the right is a screenshot of my digital dream journal on the "Lucidity" app (I am not promoting it by the way, just sharing what I have). I color code my lucid dreams in a blue color for quick reference (also highlight the dates blue in my physical journal!) It allows me to add titles, and I try to add notes such as attempted techniques, bed/wake-times, dream seeds and signs, etc. You can also have multiple dreams per night, use hashtags for personal statistics (for lucid dreams, vivid dreams, etc). There are "dream tools" but I don't really use them as I want to train my mind, not rely on an app. For example, notifications reminding you to reality check, or re-read your dreams. You can also generate a list of the most commonly typed words for dream signs, but I'd rather search myself, as they are often more complex than a reoccurring word. There are cool statistics like total number of dreams, line graphs for frequency of dreams (per day, week, month), total lucid dreams (if you label them as such) etc. I think physical journals may be slightly better as far as forming schemas and connections, and for deep analysis, but digital is much quicker during the night, or when life gets to busy to sit down and write for an hour or more. I like the combination!
I’ve nearly always used pen and paper...or pencil so I could write upside down in bed!
i used to use A5 pads but now I’ve moved to A4 since the lockdown so i can write in any details and multiple dreams to easily review them.
At the moment I put in time of bed, last meal and when, any supplements, any notes on mood or whatever plus what I’m going to try, technique wise. I also wrote a brief bulletpointed summary of the day to help with any dream seeds.
in the night/morning, I write down any dreams with a pencil and any special notes if there are any to make.
in the morning I re-write The dreams plus my awakenings, also my dream signs from the dreams and any dream seeds.
:)
I write down all at once the dreams I remember before starting my day in a physical notebook, along with all the times I remember, i.e. going to bed, waking up, whether and for how long I meditated etc. Not the most exhaustive approach, I know, but it has the added benefit of not being exhausting either :)
For some time I've kept a voice recorder next to my bed for quickly dumping out rough notes about what I just experienced during sleep, if it's something that I don't want to forget. Nothing too high tech, just something basic and reliable that I can immediately pick up and effortlessly operate without having to see or fumble about or think, and then go right back to sleep. Then later when I'm getting up at the beginning of the day I'll review those voice notes and rewrite them into more coherent text entries in the journal on my computer. I use typing because of the ease of organizing and searching, and because writing is hellishly slow and fatiguing on my wrists, even when I'm not having to rewrite every paragraph fifty times before I'm remotely happy with it. :-P
I write the entries in a specially-formatted plain-text document, which is also convenient to search for things in, but I also have a custom-written script that compiles the file into a set of local HTML files which are nice and pretty for casual browsing and reading. I have a system of tags for automatically grouping certain types of events into their own index pages, but I try to keep the tags limited to just a few important categories because I find that too many tags gets hard to keep track of and use consistently.
For quite a few years I've also experimented with recording the times into sleep of my awakenings from my sleep events (whether those be dreams or even other oddities like lucid non-REM sleep experiences). This has been an interesting way to learn more about sleep cycle and sleep event trends.
In my actual entry text, I'll write whatever details I can remember about the dream, and I'll be sure to mention if I'm unsure about anything, trying to avoid filling in gaps and making up details that might not have actually happened. If I suspect something in a dream was a false memory rather than an “actual” event, I'll note that too. I'll mention any suspected dream seeds / day residue, as that's always interesting to note, and any other factors that seem relevant. I just mention it all at the appropriate points within the passage of text in which I'm describing the dream's content.
I've never yet tried making side lists or doing color highlighting of passages. I admittedly don't even really go back and try to “map” things, but rather casually read my entries and take mental note of themes that seem to come up the most frequently or stick out the most to me. I just prefer to keep things as simple as possible and only invest in the most essential “features”, as dream journaling already represents a significant time and effort, and it's necessary to find some kind of workable compromise between reasonably useful dream journaling and still actually having enough room left for my waking life. :-)
I write my dreams as soon as I remember them in a physical notebook to avoid light and later in the day copy it to a google docs for analysis. I highlight the dream based on these category's:
Emotional
Temporal/ Spatial Continuity
Physical Continuity/ Logic
Future/ Past
Unlikely event
Unlikely/ Strange Thought
Tech Malfunction
Dream Seed
I then rate the presence of each category in the dream out of 20 where all the scores for each will total 20. I also tag the dreams main elements and themes (such as real life charters/ setting, virtual reality, medieval setting, etc...).
Other data I record includes all wake times and when I start trying to sleep, suspected stage I woke from, number of dreams recalled after waking and if I woke naturally or from an alarm.
I put all the final data into spreadsheet and graph stuff like sleep stages and times I remembered dreams for tuning wake times of wbtb and the love method and when to wake in the morning to maximise my likelihood of remembering dreams.