Thread: How effective are daily targets if you can achieve them yourself?

Stephen LaBerge mentions in his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming a list of random "Daily Targets" that you are supposed to look out for each day, 4 targets per day, and the idea behind this practice seems good enough.
However, how effective are the kinds of targets that you can choose to accomplish whenever you want to?
For example, targets like seeing yourself in the mirror, turning on a television or handling money.
I can do those things whenever I want, and if I have a reason to do them then I could also try to do them as fast as possible, just so I can mark them off.
How am I supposed to treat targets if I know I am about to do them in a moment?
If I want to listen to something on the radio then I will be aware that "Next time I turn on a television or radio" is going to be a daily target, so it doesn't come as a surprise.

We've discussed prospective memory exercise variations on other threads. Personally, I like to set myself a mixture of targets throughout the day. I stopped using the ones in the book, and set ones that I was close to 100% certain I would encounter during the day to get a lot more practice per day. 4 total targets per day became too few for me once I got better, so I started keeping a "running set" of 4 or 5, as soon as I realized that I hit or missed a target, I would replace it with a new one, so I always had 4 or 5 active targets at a time. I try to spread them out so that most are not within the immediate future, and I keep one for the far future sometimes (like inserting the key in my door upon returning home at the end of the day).

I also found that it's good practice, once you find your reliability improves, to select targets that occur while you're otherwise distracted, which makes it more challenging, but in dreams, we're *always* distracted with the action of the dream. For example, a good one would be "getting on the bus" (usually you're concerned about running for the bus, finding change to pay, finding a seat, etc.). I definitely have a lower percentage of hits for such distraction-heavy targets. I sometimes will realize them just a bit late, like a minute or two, but that still counts as a miss since we're looking for that "the next time" moment to really hit your awareness.

I wouldn't worry about targets that stay on your mind that you could "do at will." That increases awareness throughout the day. If you do set some of those, try to delay some. Or, like I suggested, if you do one right away, replace it with another one so you don't just go "4 and out" within 5 minutes at the start of the day. That all-day-long goal-awareness leads to lucids, I've found. My first few LDs were on days where I had 10-12 PM targets throughout the day.

The effectiveness is up to you. These targets you choose should be attainable, but not so easy as just flipping a switch. However, you don't want them to be too difficult, as you may get discouraged and just not do them at all. The key is your own determination and effort. You can try and do them as fast as possible, but that's not the point of it. You have a reason to do these things, and whatever you want to get out of it you likely won't get if you half-ass it.

It's a lot like performing a RC during the day. Sure, you could set an alarm and once it goes off, plug your nose real quick, but that gets you nowhere. You want to put effort into attaining these goals, and with RCs, the long term goal is to get lucid. If you don't try when you perform them, then your goal will not be achieved as quickly. It's really up to you how much you're going to work on your targets, but if you just go through the motions, you're only hurting yourself.

^^ This by the way is why I stopped using an alarm app to do RCs, which I did for a little while since I wanted a high daily RC frequency. But the goal is lucidity which requires increased awareness, and I felt I was becoming too passive in relying on the alarm.

I heard about an interesting type of daily target practice in one of Tim Post's "Advanced Lucid Dreaming" videos (I believe it was part 5) where he mentioned that he set his alarm clock on different times, memorized those times, and then tried to turn off the alarm right before it was about to ring.
For example, if you set it on 15:00 then you could try to turn it off at 14:59.
Obviously this will force you to keep the alarm times in the back of your head and be constantly prepared for them.

^^Well this would certainly keep the brain's goal center active, but I'd be concerned that it'd be rather too one-dimensional (time only).