Project Año: Secrets of the trade |

A special thank you for those who have already jumped into this fun and exciting project! This is just a quick note to try and help everyone achieve better scores as the project unfolds. Because Project Año is so similar to the one we did several months ago (Project August), we have lots of lessons learned to share for those just now entering this brand new paradigm of dream predictions.

The following article is just some of the things we learned during that last project that should be of value for anyone wanting to maximize their experience during this project.

Default Intention/Dream Incubation

The default intention in Project Año that is declared before going to sleep is this: “I will dream about the biggest global headline for 2015.” First off, most dreamers will wake up saying, “I KNOW that this dream is not going to be the biggest headline of 2015,” and so they laugh at themselves and throw in the towel.

The following suggestions will offer a new way to look at how you approach this dreaming project…

Suggestion 1: Don’t filter your dreams.

Let’s say you dream about something seemingly inconsequential, like changing a light bulb or you get a flat tire in your dream. Many dreamers would probably consider not inputting that dream into the project because they assume that it won’t come true or if does, no points would be distributed.

First off, all dreams that come from certain intentions are valuable to us for several reasons. Linguistics analysis is at the top of the list. Even your “going’ fishing” dream has valuable subconscious words that will mesh with all the other incubated dream words, which by itself will tell a story when we finally put the DreamBot on all the Project Año dreams.

For example, when we did this in Project August, we got phrases like “Earth food hard ice,” which helped us accurately predict the Polar Vortex and the resulting loss of a major grape harvest this year. We also received “House White small man going,” which helped us accurately predict Jay Carney leaving as the White House spokesman.

The bottom line is that even if the dram seems irrelevant, it is important to still document the dream because of its linguistics value. The other reason is much more simple: Most people overlook the striking accuracy of metaphors, but we’ll cover that one a bit later.

Suggestion 2: Try out a more specific intention.

Even if the dream you got after making the default intention IS the biggest headline of 2015 (i.e., it comes true exactly how you dreamed it and it came true in 2015), the default intention will not net you very many points! Therefore, we suggest a more specific intention to increase your probability of success.

All the Año dreams are masked to prevent people from comparing dreams and to prevent “day residue” from showing up in the new dreams, but if you were to see these dream writeups, you’ll notice that some dreamers have decided to make very specific intentions. For example, “I intended to dream about the biggest headline for the United States on January 18, 2015.”

If their dream comes true later, then they have a chance at maxing out the WHEN portion of the score (The score format for dreams is three numbers laid out to represent: WHAT – WHERE – WHEN). For example, if their dream comes true on Jan 18^th, then they get 5 out of 5 points for the WHEN score (the third number). If the dream comes true on Feb 15^th, that is within one month and will net 3 points.

If the entire year is intended (i.e., “Biggest headline for 2015”), and the dream comes true inside 2015, then the max score is 1.0 out of 5. Basically, the more detailed the intention, the higher the chance of a better score if it does come true.

Also, TIME does not have to be the only specific intention. For example, someone might prefer to intend this, “I intend to dream about the price of Gold on June 1st, 2015,” or “I want to dream about the biggest headline for Colorado Springs on August 1st, 2015.” The sky is the limit, but be sure to include your exact intention while writing up your dream.

One person has already intended, “I want to dream about the Happiest Headline in 2015.”

Suggestion 3: Metaphors

Try your best to think about what your dream symbols might mean as a secondary or tertiary meaning. For example, a huge wave in a dream might be a literal tidal wave, but it also might be “the wave” in a sports stadium or a gamma ray burst or some famous person waving goodbye from a prominent position. A dream about the season “The fall” might actually be something or someone falling.

Identifying metaphors correctly will prevent metaphoric score penalties from being subtracted later when the dream comes true. If the news event matches to your dream metaphorically, and you did not identify that metaphor, we subtract an automatic 0.5 points right then and there. There are additional metaphoric penalties, and you can find that in the “How To” section under “How to Score a Dream.”

Suggestion 4: Dream Often!

The more dreams you submit for the project, the better your chance at winning, but you’ll also have a much better chance at helping the collective portion of the project. As discussed before, even if your dream means nothing to you personally, the symbols and linguistics will be extremely valuable to our DreamForecasters.

Thank you again for participating in this revolutionary project! Keep having fun and keep valuing those dreams!

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