When I first started learning to lucid dream, I read on a forum that you should do reality checks whenever there is a 'scene change' during your waking life (whenever you enter a building/restaurant, walk into your house, and so on). The goal of this was to keep you aware of scene changes during your dreams (which happen often) and to get you in the habit of reality checking whenever this happens. This made sense to me.
HOWEVER...
I got to thinking about this, and the more I did it started to make less sense. In most dreams (mine at least), the part of the scene where we actually 'enter' a room is skipped. The dream will place us inside of a room/situation at random and the dream will begin at the part where we are already inside of that room. Oftentimes, there isn't any transition from one scene to another, at least not like in waking life where we walk into a building. So I thought, why would I reality check whenever I enter a room when in a dream I'm not actually going to enter the room? There would be no trigger for me to reality check.
BUT... then I started experimenting.
A huge dream sign for me is driving, normally in my own car. I recently began doing a very thorough reality check after getting into my car but before I begin driving. I have been very consistent with this and doing it every single time. Recently something interesting happened. I was driving when suddenly my prospective memory kicked in and reminded me, "hey, you never reality checked before you started driving!" As soon as this happened, I performed a reality check. *IF this would have been a dream where I am just in my car driving (without the part where I actually get into my car), I would have still done that reality check even though that transition of getting into my car never happened. After this event, I started applying the same logic with other situations in my life. Whenever I'm in a new situation or enter a new place, I will perform a reality check as soon as I enter/before I start doing that task. This way, if ever I'm dreaming and I find myself in a random situation, hopefully my prospective memory will kick in and remind me that I never performed a reality check upon entering that room (even though it never actually happened). This will inevitably help me to realize that something isn't quite right.
My question to you all...
Do you feel doing a reality check during 'scene changes' in our waking life will help us become lucid in our dreams, or do you feel it's an ineffective method considering we rarely experience these transitions in our dreams (therefore providing no trigger to reality check)?
I believe that no reality check is in vain, so it will only help if we do so. It's true that scene shifts in dream can be tricky and I also just find myself in the middle of a scene all the time. I really like how it worked for you. I would just add that when I start doing it, I probably wouldn't mentally concentrate just on 'doing reality check the moment I enter new room' for example, but I would rather have the mindset that I will do a RC 'anytime' when I find myself there. That said, from my theory (at least for me, because my prospective memory in dreams is just another story lol) best option would be doing them when you enter this space AND at some random point when you are here (of course while thinking about how you got here,etc...)