I would say that oodles of "oh I'm dreaming" and immediately waking up would be more demotivating than anything. All this hard work for just a moment? No, thanks. The thing that keeps me going are the LDs where I have self-awareness and memory to choose actions, and observe the consequences, and are long enough to do that several times while exploring the dreamscape.

However, I will say though that perhaps I think length is more important to me right now, since I seem to have pretty good self-awareness in lucids now that are more than an instant. So really for me, 1) getting in the dream, and 2) staying in the dream, are priorities, slightly ahead of 3) being "me." Because achieving frequent #1 and #2 motivates me to reach for #3.