Originally Posted by
Zoth
I'd disagree that you should set daily lucids as a goal.
But it is :) Many examples here on DV aren't people who "wished daily lucids": they are examples of people that practice consistently over long periods of time. Personally I haven't seen many people match the feat of Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys: after 6 months after his first ld, he has rates of 2 lds every 5 nights and after a year, and I haven't seen anyone reach his even more incredible feat of after just 1 year, 3 lucid dreams per 4 nights. And remember, this was without any information on the topic!
Lucidity is, for the most part, an indirect result of the practice onironauts do. When I say "for the most part", it's obvious that it's a direct process if you're WILDing every day, particularly in the form of DEILD. But outside of that, one can only keep consistency of practice and that course of action naturally leads to improvement on lucidity.
A good way to picture this is if you imagine a person using every possible method to induce lucidity at the same time. The only thing that will help her further is time, nothing else. At some point, even motivation drops being a (huge) factor in lucidity: I remember still achieving several lds a week a month after stopping training completely. It's this automatically (the fact that you automatic respond to dream cues) that dictates your lucid dream frequency (when we're talking about high frequencies ofc).
So in the end, you can say your goal is to lucid daily, but despite any possible effects deriving from positive self-talk, what difference does it make? Sure, it can stress out the importance of achieving a lucid in the near-future, but it's largely still out of your control. Your are indeed right that challenging goals tend to stick better in our minds, but in my opinion daily lucidity is not an attainable goal: you can achieve it, but not by any direct means (once again, unless you're WILDing every night), since any and all lucid dream practice (regardless if you want 1 or 7 lds per week), is exactly the same.
I did this when I began to ld, and that result in a series of lds in the first week alone. The thing, this type of mentality takes a huge toll on motivation, in the sense that it seems nearly impossible to keep it on for long periods of time (can you seriously wake up 3 times per night, 30 days in a row thinking "MUST HAVE A LD!"?). I think the reason why many people burnout is that they face lucid dreaming as a "the train never stops, only goes faster!!!!" mode, instead of mainting a consistent schedule they can keep going for long periods of time and ripping the benefits from simple practice.
TLDR: Motivation is a like a muscle: use it too much and it will go away. Rely only on it, and eventually you'll fail when it's gone. Much better to simply rely on the balanced habit that naturally develops over time.