I was reading a book about dreaming in the library yesterday, and the bit about lucid dreams gave me an idea about doing reality checks. I came up with the idea to set my digital watch to go “beep-beep” every hour, and each time I hear this, I remember to do some reality checks.
Has anybody else ever thought of this as a good way of reminding yourself to do reality checks all through the day? Do you think it could be an effective method?
Ed.
Yes, could work.
Especially if you lay that watch next to your bed the night… in case it doesn´t wake you up.Sounds similiar to the technique with hearing a song everytime you do a RC.Although a melody is IMHO better than a beep, it is much more practical and easier to do it over a longer period of time.
But, while doing this technique, I´d still keep doing RCs if something unexpected/odd/dreamlike happens, so you don´t fully depend on the beeping.
Gotta look after my watch…
Traumgänger
I think possibly the beep on my watch is too loud to go off at night and not wake me up. After all, in the past I have used the full alarm on it to wake me up in the middle of the night to do the WBTB method whilst still having my main alarm clock for the morning.
The idea is not so much as something to be used at night, but more simply as a way of reminding myself to do reality checks all through the day.
Anyway, it’s just a little side idea really, to maybe help boost things. My main focus at the moment is this CD I am developing, as you know. 
Ed.
Hmm… but if you do the RCs when the watch beeps, your watch perhaps won´t occur in your dreams.However, I don´t know, could work anyway.
But, you could also put your watch into some cloth or anything, so it isn´t as loud
Traumgänger
Sorry, I think you misunderstand me slightly. I’m not really intending for the watch to appear in my dreams particularly, I just want to use the hourly beep of the watch to remind me to do reality checks regularly throughout the day, whereas I would usually forget otherwise.
I’ll still be doing them any other times I remember, or if anything strange happens, but this way, if it’s been an hour and I haven’t done a reality check, and then my watch beeps, I’ll be reminded to do one.
Do you see what I mean?
Sorry if I’m not explaining it very well, I’m not sure how else to say what I mean.
Ed.
My watch has the same function and I “used” it the same way you plan to. For me it didn’t really work. If I was involved in something so deeply as to not remember to do a reality check, I wouldn’t hear the beep. Funny and ironic thing just happened. While typing this up it beeped for 1:00 my time. 
Its probably better to “set” your internal clock I use mine to wake me up at odd hours of the night because my watch isn’t very loud and my real alarms will wake up everyone in the house. Using the hourly beep function may help you remember to do reality checks but only if you concsiously hear and recognize it.
Well yeah, I’ve been doing this yesterday and today, and so far I have heard almost all beeps and every single time I have heard it I have thought about doing reality checks.
Ed.
Sounds like a good idea, im terrible at remembering to do RC’s so a watch beeping every hour sure would help me out. TO THE WATCH STORE! 
I was planning to use this very same technique, but before I got around to buying a watch with an annoyingly loud beep, I had a dream where my normal, analogue watch started beeping (which it doesn’t in RL). I thought, ‘that’s right! That means I should do a reality check!’, which I did. And decided I wasn’t dreaming. Grrrr. I was so annoyed when I woke up, I gave up on my watch plan, so I’m very keen to hear if it helps you to get lucid, Ed.