I think there's two ways you can go about RCs. Like Placebo said, it's a good thing to not be robotic in your reality checks but rather by thought or realization of a dream sign or something similar, rather than just "I haven't RCed in a while, so I probably should..."

However, I wouldn't discount the other method either. There was a month or so where I began doing a significant amount of RCs a day (50+?) and although I've stopped doing that many, there was a noticeable increase in number of lucids.

So although the second method isn't necessarily best, it can pay off as well, so it's really up to you.