Hey there,

In my opinion, you're asking the wrong person

These questions you're posing, you should be asking them to yourself. Experiment, try things out, you'll learn via trial and error. These things are highly variable: what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for someone else. For some people reality checks seem to have no effect at all, and yet others can't get lucid with them.

Its all a matter of finding out what works for you.

Just my 2 cents,

-Redrivertears-