Best reality check for those who wear a watch

[KingCobra]

My favorite reality check is the watch reality check. For those who wear a wristwatch, this is very effective for lucid dreaming. Digital watches work best for this, but it might work with analog watches also. You've probably heard of it: looking at the time and back again. If the time is different or changed in some way, it's a dream. The best thing about this reality check is that it isn't one of those "embarrassing" reality checks. By "embarrassing", I mean reality checks that would be weird in other people's eyes. Such as trying to make your finger go through your other hand in public. Or counting your fingers and looking at your hands which make other people wonder "what the hell is he trying to do?" lol. So what I mean is that there are some reality checks that are great, but would be embarrassing to do when people are around or watching. But reality checks like the Watch RC is one of those reality checks that can be done anytime anywhere easily without looking stupid. And the Watch RC (especially digital watch) works almost 100% of the time. I have a digital watch that beeps every hour. When it beeps, I remember to reality check, which is a good way to remember to do them. So if you wear a wristwatch usually, it is the easiest way to reality check and become lucid.

[TravisE]

This has been one of my primary RCs for years. It was one of the first ones I tried, and it's one I stuck with because it works pretty well for me. Occasionally, I'll instead use another nearby digital clock or any other text or objects which I would expect to be static, if it's slightly faster or more convenient than looking down at my watch. I've also learned some interesting things from this RC over the years. It usually works well, but sometimes in dreams I somehow have trouble trying to decide if the time has changed from glance to glance, and it can take a while for me to figure out the result of the RC. Or I might find I'm having trouble remembering the numbers or something odd like that. This has led me to realize that since this is something that never normally happens when doing the RC in waking life, I can use oddities like that in themselves as indications that I'm dreaming. I don't actually need to waste time determining if the time has actually changed in that case because I've pretty much already proven I'm dreaming. It's surprisingly hard for me to actually remember this fact in LDs sometimes, but I'm gradually getting better at it. This also sort of suggests to me that the next step might be to generalize my whole RC approach and practice going through waking life simply observing mundane, ordinary things in general, watching out for any possible sings that I'm dreaming.