First, you could try self-hypnosis or meditation. You can give yourself suggestions (refer to HILD tutorial - Hypnosis Induced Lucid Dream) that can increase your LD ratio tremendously.
The day I implemented LD-suggestions into my SH sessions I got one of the few chances to become lucid that night. I'm still a beginner and haven't yet had an LD but the SH suggestions gave me an extremely long and vivid dream with great recall and doing an RC.

Or you can get a clear state of mind and be aware (meditation). I've read multiple times that regular meditation over a longer period of time (few weeks) does definately increase LDs.

Of course what you said is also good to do for LDs. Constant awareness. Then you could try to increase daily awareness, e.g. try to sense as much as possible, always keep your awareness up and in contact with the outer world to have the chance to immediately notice when a dreamsign occurs or anything like that.

And of course, you shouldn't try to hard. When you do self-hypnosis and implement the suggestions, don't worry whether they work or not. They're a very good support so that you should just continue with whatever you're doing. You don't need to be constantly focused on LDing. Your subconsciousness is also working on it without constant input. Be happy that you did it and expect your lucid dream.