6 Ways to Mine Your Dreams for Answers

Try these tips to remember your dreams more vividly and make the most of their problem-solving potential

Start on a weekend: Dreams are best remembered when you wake without an alarm; that way, you'll likely wake from REM sleep, and your dream will be fresh in your mind, says psychologist and dream researcher Rosalind Cartwright, Ph.D., of Rush University Medical Center.

Sharpen your recall: Before you nod off, tell yourself your dreams matter and you want to remember them. Stating your intention is the first step toward enhancing dream recall, says G. William Domhoff, Ph.D., a dream researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "If you think they're unimportant, you'll forget them the instant you wake up."

Sleep on an easy one: Begin with something simple, like how to fit an oversize sofa into your overstuffed living room. Slowly work your way up to more intricate problems, like how to resolve a childhood issue with your sister. When Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, asked college students to solve problems in their sleep, nearly half of the volunteers who chose a moderately easy problem dreamed a solution within a week. But their success rate ebbed as the problems became more complicated.

Stay on track: Make the question the last thing you think about before nodding off.

"As you drift to sleep, you're very suggestible; it's a bit like a hypnotic trance," says Barrett. Use this time to conjure up your problem. Sum it up in one or two short sentences. If possible, put an object representing the quandary on a bedside table. If not, call to mind a clear image of the issue -- just make sure it's the last thing you mull over.

Write it down: Keep a pad of paper and a pen next to your bed. Upon waking, take a moment to lie quietly. Glance around the outskirts of your consciousness to see if a dream is lurking. "If a fragment comes into your head, gently follow it backward," says Domhoff. "We usually remember our dreams in reverse." So, like a loose piece of yarn, a dream may unravel if you tug gently on one end.

Keep still: If you wake up in the middle of a dream, mimic the body in REM sleep by staying still. During REM sleep, muscles are paralyzed, a protective mechanism that keeps you from socking your partner when you reach out to grab a flyaway Frisbee. Use this time to think about the dream and trace its story line. Give the dream a title before you open your eyes, says Cartwright, because when the mind is awake, it's more likely to remember a short catch-phrase than the visual images. Then write down as much as you can remember.

Famous Dreamers

In her book, "The Committee of Sleep," dream researcher Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., recounts stories of celebrities and historical figures who've successfully mined their dreams for gold.

Billy Joel: The singer/songwriter says he often dreams musical arrangements; he's gone so far as to say, "I know all the music I've composed has come from a dream."

Annamaria Gundlach: This artist found over time that she could design pots by waiting to see the next one in a dream. She observed its shape and size; it would usually be embedded with everyday objects such as nails and fabric, and she would faithfully re-create it. Her major traveling show was called Dreams in Clay.

Paul Horowitz: A real-life version of Jodie Foster's character in the movie "Contact," he's a Harvard physics professor whose passion is designing telescopes to hunt for evidence of extraterrestrials. When he's building a new one and gets stuck on a technical glitch, he'll dream he's looking over the shoulder of a man solving the very problem that has stumped him.

Frederick Banting: This Canadian doctor dreamed a way to isolate insulin and, therefore, make diabetes treatable.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: On a rainy night in 1816, Lord Byron challenged his houseguests to write a horror story. That night, Shelley dreamed the basis for what would become her best-selling novel, "Frankenstein."

Paul McCartney: In 1965, the 22-year-old Beatle dreamed the melody of the song "Yesterday." Upon waking, he immediately sat down and played it on the piano.

Stephen King: The prolific writer of grisly tales admits that he's reaped images from his vivid dreamscapes for his novels and short stories, including Salem's Lot and It.

Katherine Mansfield: An unusual dream experience became her successful short story Sun and Moon. It is an impressionistic tale seen through the eyes of a 5-year-old boy. "I dreamed it all," she said.