Typically, lucid dreaming guides talk about two activities:
Those can be roughly compared to making a guide for getting fit by telling you to open and close doors repeatedly and eating bananas. Not wrong, technically, but none of the guides ever really explain what exactly is supposed to be done and all of the methods are so roundabout in the way that they accomplish the thing you try to do.
Lucid dreaming for most (if not all) people depends really on two factors:
Shattering a misconception right off the bat, there's no actual difference between dream recall and regular memory.
Focus and memory are essentially two sides of the same coin, or at least in this specific context. If you don't focus, the things that happen in front of you don't commit to memory. And if you don't remember something, you could essentially say it didn't happen, at least when dreams are concerned.
Ever zoned out and realized that more time had passed than you assumed? Did something in the morning and completely forgot about it? That usually happens because you auto-pilot it and don't really focus or commit it to memory. Now, while you're in a dreamy stupor, how much do you really focus on what's happening inside your dreams?
Over time, this tendency to not remember things in dreams had formed this weird notion that dream memory is different to regular memory, at least subconsciously. Now, why does this matter? Well, a lot of people started suggesting doing dream journals to improve "dream recall". Remember my analogy to getting fit by opening doors repeatedly? You do technically improve your memory by trying to aggressively recall your dreams, but a lot of people do only that, which isn't as effective as simply improving your memorization ability overall.
This now also plays into the other side of the coin which is the focusing part. The most common method people use for lucid dreaming is to form a habit of doing reality checks. You look at your hands or at a clock, you search for signs that something isn't quite right. For some people, they don't even need that. They just spontaneously get lucid.
Why does that work when things in dreams are almost always really bizarre and weird?
The answer is focus. In that moment where you intentionally focus yourself to search for and dissect whatever's happening around or in front of you, your mind becomes more lucid, as in, focused. You start paying attention, things commit to memory, your critical thinking activates, you leave auto-pilot.
Anyways, with the understanding of what makes "reality checks" tic, you can now sort of see where the rest of this is going. While doing random hand checks and forming a habit of it is helpful, you can do something better, even though it’s pretty mentally taxing.
Throughout the day, simply try to randomly recall what you've done up until the point you are at. It helps to write it down, even physically if you want to go all out, but it’s not necessary per say.