No lucids, but benefitting from trying

I've been trying to have a lucid the past 3 days, and while I've come close through sleep paralysis/attempting WILD, I've noticed a lot of benefits to my waking life.

First, my ability to picture things in my mind has been much stronger, which is a big plus since I'm an illustrator. Being able to recall details about people and things I want to dream about prior to sleeping has significantly increased from 3 days ago.

Second, I find that my focus and intensity towards trying to create a lucid dream has carried over to my waking life as early as 6am -> onwards. I'm alert from as early as 4am and can easily fall back to sleep to get as much rest as I need. This is especially surprising as I am an incredibly deep sleeper (I can sleep through a thunderstorm with the window open) and it takes me quite a while to feel awake when I get up in the morning.

So while I was disappointed yesterday that I still haven't had a true lucid, I'm confident it will come soon and I'm loving the benefits from putting my energy into something right before bed.

This seems like a great forum and I wish I stumbled across it years ago

Might as well tack this on to this thread instead of creating a new one:

One of the benefits from attempting lucids is also a detriment in that it hampers my ability to fall asleep unless I'm really, really tired. Normally I'm almost narcoleptic, any time I lay down - even to rest for a minute on the couch, I fall into a deep sleep. Now that I'm trying to have naps etc to get lucids I find I can't get to sleep.

I suppose this is because I am now aware of my sleeping patterns, and because I now have awareness of both my waking and sleeping states. I guess my body is adjusting to get proper sleep and become fully awake when my alarm goes off. Honestly, this is MUCH more of a benefit than a drawback because I'm like 50% more productive/energetic but, still...lucids seem incredible.

So now what do I do when I want to take naps during the day? Exercise hasn't helped any.

Are you also keeping a dream journal? This is an ongoing and essential step to becoming lucid.
You also should be doing reality checks periodically throughout the day. The ones that work best for me were looking at my hands, reading a clock, or checking lightswitches. Usually in dreams lightswitches do not function properly. I suggest looking trying to become lucid through other techniques such as DILD, which is how I had my first one.

Yeah I'm jotting things down in a dream journal. I knew about the lightswitch check from Waking Life years ago, but I've yet to be able to use it. I've been trying to WILD, so maybe falling asleep without trying to create a dream will yield better results.

PS: who thought that DILD made a good acronym? One letter short of a sex toy. That's just begging to be made fun of.