Remembering your dreams

DreamsProductivity

15 Jan

Dream journaling on Obsidian

Last year I discovered a very cool note-taking tool called Obsidian. Check out a piece I wrote about this on my website’s blog here. Obsidian can basically allow you to take notes like any other note-taking tool (in the simplest way) but the thing I love about it is ‘Graph View’ which allows you to see your notes scattered around like a universe.

You can see connections between notes if you add hashtags or add hyperlinks between them. So as you can see below some notes are connected by bigger nodules and others are just hanging out on their own. These are called ‘Orphaned Notes’.

I’ve read that the more you write down your dreams, the more you remember them. And it’s true. Even if you don’t remember your dreams, but remember a feeling or a theme, and then write down 1-2 words the minute you wake up, the more you’ll actually start to remember snippets of your dream world. (Try it).

I’ve kept dream diaries since I was around 13. In notebooks, on my computer or phone - I’ve just always tried to keep a record because I’m absolutely fascinated by dreams. This fascination grew further when I discovered lucid dreaming. Thank you Waking Life (more on that in another post.)

Anyway. Basically, last year, I started using Obsidian to write down my dreams. Here’s why:

I wanted to see the connections between my dreams.
I wanted to be able to explore common patterns or symbols that were arising.
I wanted to gain insights into hidden themes.

So, let me show you what that means. For example, on Graph View you can add groups with different colours. As you can see below I’ve grouped the words ‘Orca’ (yellow), animal (blue) and ‘life’ (red) - this can show me that, for example, I’ve seen an Orca in my dream 3 times. That’s pretty cool - unraveling what it means/why it means something is an entirely different story but even seeing this tiny snapshot of your subconscious, for me, is incredibly interesting.

I just wanted to share this tool with you because I feel that there are probably other dream and data enthusiasts out there who may want to try this out. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below and I’ll try to answer as accurately as I can.

Keep dreaming.