Good post, Svenshinhan! 
Just a little thing to add, RC’s work best if you get used to what a dream feels like, so you could try and remember what dreams you had the previous night, especially what they felt like, and if there’s any difference with what you’re feeling now. Differences can include, feeling lighter, more comfortable in temperature, a little number, so try and compare, it’s a very useful exercise 
The way I do it, is that I don’t think about it too much when I do a RC.
For instance, as soon as the thought of RCing comes to my head I instantly do one without really thinking about my surroundings, to sort of “surprise” myself. Cause if I start thinking about it too much, the part of my brain which distinguishes between reality and fiction will simply tell me “No bro, this is reality!” before I do my RC.
So you have to do the RC before your brain has to react.
Well that’s my take on it! Hope it helps.
How Many Reality Checks = Success?..NONE.
What Is the Response To A Dreamsign? = Reality Check!
How Many Times Should A Dreamsign Appear Per Day? = NONE except in dreams.
IMJ
I have to say I done a RC very often, without taking in surroundings etc, but i will try and take more notice now. I did not do a RC for about a week i think, that’s when I had a LD, I am strange i have to say, my dreams are far more vivid after Wine hahaa 
But i think the point i am trying to make is that once i relaxed about the whole thing and stopped doing RC’s, I had a LD. My Daughter did say thou I was doing them without knowing lol. Ok im not making sense , but in my head i am so ill leave ya to it lol x
For my RC i set my watch to make a beep every hour.
Once i hear the beep i look around take in everything look for anything odd
then i check my hands and try to put my finger through them and then i pinch my nose and try to breathe, then i continue doing what i was doing.
But i was wondering if i kept my watch near me when i sleep, would i hear it in my dream? it only beeps once so i don’t know if it’ll sink in or not.
Definitely it would help a lot if you would, Minato.
Your practice with the watch would be a little pointless - you’re training yourself to question reality when you hear a particular tone, that is independent from you, instead of being actually looking for dream signs, or being generally aware.
But, if you put your watch close to yourself when you sleep, you will hear that tone in dreams too, and that could verily trigger a successful RC. Just remember to put it distant enough so you stay asleep when you hear it! 
I would just like to point out that one of my biggest dreamsigns is being at work and not typing in numbers correctly in the register. That happens to me in RL, frequently in fact. There are just too many numbers to remember sometimes. If I were to ignore this during the day, I would ignore it in my dreams. Not all DS are a big pink octopus as a boss or something strange like that. If you have a common occurance in dreams that also happens to be IRL, it’s still a DS and you should still take full advantage of it.
Such a good idea, sadly my phone does not have that option.
People, do you know somebody on ld4all (or in RL) who can make phone apps? It would be cool to have a Lucid Dreaming App on my phone.
Ive poking my hand for 2 weeks now i believe, but only succeeded once in a dream.
I was about to ask the same question as OP. I know that quality is very important, but for sure that quantity is also important. How many RC you, when you were a newbie, did every day? One is not enough, 200 its overhelming…
Svenshinhan, great answer, very complete. As a failed-lucid-dreamer, I will start to check my luck with random RC. I remember more often to do random checks than doing on pre-determined events (“when I see a dog”, etc).
I didn’t dare to open a new topic, but I think this one is the one in which I can expose my problem with RC.
For weeks, I do my RC very genuinly, and then, because of works, or tiredness, I forget…and that’s the moment I have LD 
Did it occur to somebody ?
Or maybe this is because my mind took the habitude to do so ? 
Svendishan, I’m gonna follow your advice, I have faith 
It’s very important to question reality at the right time. From my non lucid dreams that turn lucid later on I’ve realized that I have been doing wrong when it comes to dreams. I had this one non lucid dream where I was terrorized by the whole dream so it seemed and when everything calmed down then I noticed that something was wrong, only then I question the moment and the reality, not in the moment of the heat, not when I was under pressure but when everything calmed down.
What I wanna say is that I did that in a lucid dream because I was doing in waking life too, whenever I would do something I would be preoccupied by doing something in particular and when I was done I would do RC but what I was supposed to do is question reality “while” doing whatever I was doing.
So you are a teacher, right?! When you work with your students, while doing on exams, questioning students in those situations you should question reality too, not only when you are done with doing this things.
You don’t have to do a physical RC like looking at your hands or pinching your nose and trying to breath, you can do a mental check, you can ask THE questions: Am I dreaming?! Is this a dream?! How did I get here?! Is this student supposed to be here?! What am I doing at the moment?! And so on and on…
It takes practice but with time it’s amazing how much results can give… 
As I said in other topic I had a plan. I worked on it for many days, doing lots of RCs, questioning myself if this or that is possible, I tried to be mindfull all the day (mindful in a buddhist point of view, ie, awareness on everything around me), etc. How many LDs did I have? Zero.
After some days without that stuff I had a LD! I dreamt about falling down in a high place and I tought “This is a dream!”. I mean, the situation that lead me to see that I was dreaming was falling down from a very high place, something that I never do lol. It seems that achieving lucidity is something more than RC and full awareness of your life. I just dont know what.
Hey Wild Elephant!
Im no LD expert- but I’ve had some, so I’ll throw my opinion out there.
By your account of the dream, it seems as if you didn’t do a reality check, so you would be right in saying that doing RC didn’t necessarily help you become lucid that night.
However, you may have became lucid because of the “all day mindfulness” technique you did a couple days before this dream. I personally find this technique very helpful because it helps you to realize when you are in an abnormal situation (like suddenly falling) , and realizing your dreaming.
Perhaps, as an alternative, it was related to dream signs! I know that falling seems to be a common dream that a lot of people have, and in a way, can be considered a dream sign. If you are aware that people tend to dream of themselves falling, then when you encounter that situation in your own dreams, maybe it helped you become lucid?
All in all, sometimes it’s hard to say what exactly causes lucidity in some dreams.
Thank you dB FTS for your answer. I rode it several times to really understand it, but I now I get it clear.
You’re so right ; I’m doing my RC only when I’m home, cooking, smoking, preparing my lessons…when I’m working, I am so focus on what I’m doing that I can’t think about RC. But now, it’s gonna change
The root problem is in prioritization. We weren’t taught to make dreams priority in any kind of way so when we grow up and when we start to live in grown up world we do grown up things, that’s why children have less trouble with dreams then us. But well, we can change that, we just have to be aware of it…
Good luck!
Performing 5-10 reality checks is a good number, but as Svenshinhan said it’s a matter of quality, not quantity. Mindlessly going through the motions of a reality check will not help you.
One trick is to do reality checks with the assumption that you are already dreaming. This challenges the basic human assumption that all experiences are waking experiences. It will shift the burden of proof on your brain to prove that you NOT dreaming.
Another tip is to make a habit of performing 2 different reality checks together in case one of them fails.
Also keep in mind that lucid dreaming training is a holistic process that requires you to perform many different activities. Reality checks are just one aspect of learning lucid dreaming. Are you consistently keeping a dream journal, improving your dream recall, analyzing your dreamsigns, are learning to master an induction technique? (eg. WILD or MILD), etc.
oh yes I do Arnov !
But you all point out an important thing I was unaware of ; when you do a RC, you’re doing it assuming that you are dreaming. That’s what I do for a couple of days now and I know it’s going to pay, it’s now a matter of time and patience…and luck, as far as I’m concerned, caus my daughter wakes up sooooo early in the morning 
that even if I jump on my dream journal, I just can’t remember anything when she’s talking to me nineteen to the dozen
All the LD I had were on week end, when she fortunately get to sleep again, urging me to a WBTD without knowing it, and having the best LD I ever had 
lol 6 a day
you should do reality checks every 15-20 mins
You simply probably just didn’t do it for long enough. It usually takes far more then doing something for a few days to became a habit and hence then impacting upon your sleep time. Some say it takes a few weeks to develop a new habit, so your reality checking and awareness exercises should of been done at least for that long before giving up on them if they still weren’t working
It could of been that thou still which influenced you to became aware in your falling dream days later.
…
In response to this thread subject… as others have said its quality over quantity. Also a person may never succeed if they are doing their reality checks wrong, there are various ways to go wrong with this (so I suggest stick to the well known reality checks or if you aren’t, ask someone experienced in LD if you are doing something likely to work).
One person trying to learn to LD and never being able to succeed and asking then for advice, when I asked him what the reality check being done was, he said he’d made up his own. He was staring at his hand trying to manifest an apple in the hand (while never looking away from the hand) and if the apple appeared there, it would mean he was dreaming. That reality check was setting himself up for failure!! as it was doubtful it would work well for reasons more experienced lucid dreamers would be aware of.
Also patience may be needed, if it don’t work in a few days don’t give up. You may have to do this for weeks.