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Comment by bfrydl | Hacker News Reader

If you want to remember your dreams you can train yourself to do so. Keep a journal on your nightstand. The moment you wake up, write down all the details you can remember. After doing this for a while, you will remember more and more and the memories won't fade so easily.

You can also cheat a bit in my experience by waking up maybe 45-90 mins before you normally would, then going back to sleep. The dreams you have in this period should be more vivid and easier to remember.

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You can also - and this has worked very well for me - do a little affirmation in your head before you fall asleep. Just say to yourself a few times: "I'm going to remember (all) my dreams". This is super easy and very effective. After a few days/weeks I was able to remember several dreams that I had that night. The cheating you mentioned also works very well and you can actually do it a few times with each nap being 10-20 minutes.

How do you ever remember to write in it after waking?

I'm lucky if I remember deodorant first thing in the morning. I'm usually good 5-10 minutes after waking, but before then I rarely do things like shower and sometimes won't even make coffee. I guess I can talk to folks and be really mean at first - I don't remember these outbursts, though. It gets worse with bad sleep hygiene.

I'm just like you in the morning, but I was asked to keep a dream journal for a creative writing class. I was sure it wouldn't work, but it did.

Put the journal (opened to the right page) and pen right beside your bed where you can't miss it when you wake up. Write down anything that's in your head, even if it's just, "I don't remember anything." Eventually, you'll start remembering dreams vividly and be able to write them down.

Or at least this seems to work for most people. I have no idea why. Of course, it probably doesn't work for everyone. But then again, what does?

Have the notebook next to you in bed with a pen ready. If you need to get up to do it, you'll often forget all or most of your dream by the time you get to the notebook.

That's the thing: I do have a pen and paper by my bed - mostly for those "going to sleep" thoughts but also so I always know where one is.

I never remember until I've been awake and moving around for a bit. :)

Sounds like a fun experiment. I'll try this and report back in a month

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