Plan of Action

You finally entered the Phase. You deepened. The environment is stable, your hands feel real, vision is sharp.

You stand there for ten seconds wondering what to do.

By the time you decide, the Phase has faded. You're back in bed. You spent weeks training to enter, and you wasted the entry on indecision.

This is the most common failure mode after deepening. The fix is preparation: a pre-planned, pre-rehearsed sequence of actions that runs automatically once you're stable.

Why planning matters more than entering

Inside the Phase, your prefrontal cortex - the brain region responsible for planning, decision-making, and complex thought - runs at reduced capacity compared to full wakefulness. Voss et al. 2009 showed elevated prefrontal activity in lucid dreaming compared to non-lucid REM, but it's still below waking levels. You're more aware than in an ordinary dream, but less capable of complex deliberation than when awake.

The practical consequence: decisions inside the Phase are slow and brittle. "Hmm, what should I do? Maybe try to fly? No wait, I wanted to see what's outside. Or should I do a reality check first?" - this internal monologue is a high-cost cognitive operation in the Phase, and while you're running it, the experience is fading.

A pre-rehearsed plan bypasses this. Instead of deciding, you execute. You know what comes first because you decided it yesterday, awake. The plan runs almost automatically.

Beginners who enter the Phase without a plan typically get 5-15 seconds of usable Phase time before the experience fades. Beginners with a rehearsed plan get the same duration but actually use it.

What a plan looks like

A Phase plan is a short, ordered list of concrete actions. Not goals - actions. Not abstract intentions - specific movements and observations.

Bad plan:

"Explore the Phase, try flying, maybe see if I can find something interesting"

Good plan:

1. Touch the wall to my right, examine the texture for 5 seconds
2. Walk to the bedroom door and open it
3. Look at my hands in detail, count fingers
4. Try to jump and float briefly

Why the second works:

• Each item is a discrete, completable action
• The first item is trivially achievable (a wall is always there)
• The sequence builds in complexity, leaving ambitious goals for last
• "Touch," "walk," "look," "jump" are verbs your body knows how to execute
• Time estimate per item: 5-15 seconds. Total: 30-60 seconds. Matches realistic beginner Phase duration.

The first-action rule

The first action in your plan must be trivially achievable.

This is non-negotiable. The first action sets the tone for the whole session. If it works, momentum builds. If it fails - if you tried to fly first and didn't take off - frustration kicks in, the Phase becomes harder to control, and the experience often collapses within seconds.

Trivially achievable first actions:

• Touch the nearest object and examine it
• Look at your hands carefully
• Walk to a wall and run your fingers along it
• Pick up a small object you can see
• Walk to the doorway

Notice the overlap with deepening. The first action of your plan can be a continuation of deepening - tactile engagement with a nearby surface. This is fine. The line between deepening and plan execution is intentionally blurry.

What never goes first:

• Flying or levitating
• Teleporting to a location
• Summoning a specific person or entity
• Anything requiring strong intention or expectation
• Anything emotionally charged

These can come later in the plan - after you've completed 2-3 simple actions and built stability. They cannot be first.

Categories of actions

Sort your plans by intent. Different sessions can target different categories.

Sensory exploration

Examining the Phase as a perceptual phenomenon. Looking at textures, listening to sounds, tasting food, touching surfaces. Especially valuable for early practice - builds your sensory skill in the Phase and develops deepening intuition.

Examples: examine a book in detail, taste an apple, listen carefully to ambient sound, walk barefoot on grass.

Motor skills

Practicing physical skills inside the Phase. Schädlich et al. 2017 found that motor skill practice in lucid dreams produced measurable improvement in waking performance - small effect, but real. Best for skills with a strong motor-imagery component: dart throwing, free-throws, certain instrument techniques, gymnastic moves.

Examples: practice a specific guitar chord transition, throw 20 darts at a target, run through a dance sequence.

Worth noting: only practice skills you already know. Learning a completely new skill in the Phase doesn't work well - you need an existing motor template to refine.

Creativity

Using the Phase as a source of creative input. Some practitioners report that ideas, melodies, designs, or solutions encountered in the Phase translate to waking life. Anecdotal but commonly reported.

Examples: ask a Phase character for a song idea, look at art in a Phase gallery, work through a problem you've been stuck on.

Encounters

Meeting Phase characters - imagined people, entities, or representations. Useful for self-exploration, dialogue with mental constructs, or simply social experience. Save for after you have ~10 stable Phase sessions; encounters are emotionally engaging and can collapse fragile early Phases.

Examples: have a conversation with a specific person, ask a character a question, simply observe who shows up if you intend "show me someone important."

Exploration

Travel to places. Inside the Phase, doors, mirrors, and corners can lead to anywhere. Useful for the experience of novel environments.

Examples: walk through your front door expecting to find a forest, find a mirror and step through, jump and intend to land somewhere new.

How to construct a plan

The procedure:

1. Pick 3-5 actions

Three is the realistic floor; five is the ceiling for beginners. More than five and you're planning for a duration you won't get.

2. Order them by stability cost

Stability cost = how much each action threatens to collapse the Phase. Low-cost actions go first (touch, look, walk). High-cost actions go last (fly, summon, teleport).

3. Make each action concrete

Not "look at things" but "look at the painting on the wall." Not "fly" but "jump from the balcony and glide to the tree across the street." Concreteness gives the action a clear endpoint - you know when it's done.

4. Rehearse before sleep

This is the step most practitioners skip. The plan only works if it's loaded into accessible memory at sleep onset.

Before bed, mentally walk through the plan. Imagine yourself in the Phase performing each action, in order. Feel the wall under your hand. See yourself walking to the door. Imagine the floor under your feet as you jump.

This serves two purposes: it loads the plan into prospective memory (similar mechanism to MILD), and it gives your motor systems a head-start when you actually execute.

5. Keep it stable across sessions

For the first 5-10 Phase sessions, use the same plan or a small variation. Don't redesign it every night. Repetition builds the dream-side execution skill - by the third or fourth time you've run a plan, the actions feel automatic.

Executing the plan

Once you're in the Phase and deepened:

Start the first action immediately. Don't pause to recall the plan. If you set it up properly before bed, the first action should surface naturally. If it doesn't, default to touching the nearest surface - this is always a safe first move and almost always part of any beginner plan anyway.

Complete each action before moving on. Don't half-do something and skip to the next. If the first action is "examine the bookshelf," actually examine it - read a title, pick up a book, look at the binding. Half-attention produces half-Phase.

Don't track time. Wondering "how long have I been here?" is one of the fastest fade triggers. The plan defines the pacing; let it run. If the Phase fades before you finish, that's data for next time.

Adapt without abandoning. Sometimes an action doesn't work. Tried to open a door and it won't open. The room you walked into isn't what you expected. Don't panic and start over. Move to the next action. Or improvise: if the door won't open, walk to a different door, or jump out the window. The plan is a guide, not a contract.

If the Phase starts fading mid-plan, re-deepen. Don't try to finish the plan through the fade. Touch something. Rub your hands together. Stabilize, then continue.

Common mistakes

No plan at all. Entering the Phase and improvising. Sometimes works for experienced practitioners; almost never works for beginners. The 10-30 seconds spent deciding is the Phase you needed.

Overly ambitious plans. Eight actions, requiring flight, teleportation, and a specific deceased relative to appear. You'll get through one, maybe. Then frustration. Then collapse. Match plan length to realistic duration.

Emotionally charged first goal. "I want to see my late grandmother." High emotional stakes at entry guarantee the Phase fades before resolution. Save emotional goals for after you've stabilized your Phase practice over weeks; even then, structure them late in the plan.

Vague actions. "Explore," "have fun," "see what happens." These aren't actions, they're labels. Without concrete endpoints, you'll wander and fade.

Changing the plan mid-Phase. "Actually I'd rather try to fly instead." This is deciding inside the Phase, which is exactly what the pre-plan was supposed to prevent. Stick with the plan even if it feels boring. Boring is stable; novel is risky.

Treating failure as failure. A plan where you completed two of five actions before the Phase faded is a successful session. Two completed actions is two more than zero. Expectations matter - see Expectations.

Same plan forever. Once a plan executes smoothly for 3-4 sessions, evolve it. Add a new action. Reorder. Try a different category. Stagnation in planning limits how much you grow as a practitioner.

Logging plan execution

After each Phase session, in your journal, note:

• Which actions you completed
• Which ones you skipped or failed
• What ended the Phase (fade, wake-up, frustration, emotional spike)
• What you'd change for next time

After 5-10 sessions, patterns emerge. You'll see which categories of actions you handle well and which collapse the Phase. You'll see which times of morning produce longer or more usable Phases. This data drives plan evolution far better than guessing.

The REMstack tracker is designed for this kind of logging, but a notes app works fine. Consistency matters more than format.

Beyond beginner plans

Once you've completed 10-15 stable Phase sessions and can reliably execute a 3-5 item plan, you can structure more ambitious sessions:

• Themed sessions - all actions in one category (motor skills practice, or all encounter-based)
• Extended exploration - one core goal with branches based on what you find
• Specific applications - using Phase time for creative work, problem-solving, or skill practice (see future articles in applications/)

The principle stays the same: plan ahead, start small, execute deliberately, log results. Even experienced practitioners benefit from explicit plans. The Phase rewards preparation.

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References

1. Raduga M. An effective lucid dreaming method by inducing hypnopompic hallucinations. International Journal of Dream Research. 2021;14(1):1-9. doi:10.11588/ijodr.2021.1.71170
2. Schädlich M, Erlacher D, Schredl M. Practicing a motor skill in a lucid dream enhances upcoming performance: A randomized sleep laboratory study. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology. 2017;6(1):98-109. doi:10.1037/spy0000084

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This article is part of the REMstack Knowledge Base - a free, open, data-driven resource for Phase practitioners. All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.