Thread: How often should i perform reality checks, would you suggest?

Yes just as mentioned above, it’s the quality that’s important, not the quantity.

I’ve often become lucid from doing just one or two good RC’s the previous day -- I would take maybe 30 seconds to a minute to really question whether I was dreaming or not (RC’s don’t have to be this long, but I just do them sometimes as they’re great for elevating self-awareness). In contrast, I’ve done RC’s obsessively throughout the day (like every 10 minutes) which never resulted in lucidity, not even dreams about RC’ing!

But yes, the ultimate point of the RC, as Ctharlhie mentioned, is to train your self-awareness. It is therefore important to exclude thoughts which would impinge upon the self-awareness you are trying to create in that moment. If you became reasonably self-aware in a dream, you would have a strong chance of knowing you’re dreaming, so it’s important to not allow anything during the moment of an RC to diminish your sense of self (including distracting thoughts, the environment etc.).

RC'ing whenever you think of it is fine, as long as it's not too taxing. Also the digital watch RC sounds good (I do it myself), but again it’s really the self-awareness you put behind it which makes you lucid -- the actual “check” can consist of anything.