Does this mean my staff could be asked to get some work done while asleep?
In all seriousness I look forward to seeing exactly how much we can do while lucid dreaming. Also, what are the consequences? Does it cost you the nights rest? or could this be a life hack for getting more done in a day?
There are all sorts of things that are meant to happen during sleep, around learning and similar, that are unlikely to be feasible while you're lucid dreaming, so it might impede learning skills, for example.
When I did extensive lucid dreaming I found my brain was making my dreams more and more boring, I'd guess to reduce the chances of me noticing that I was dreaming.
Nowadays, I retain an awareness of when I'm dreaming, and I interrupt dreams when I'm especially fascinated by something in them or don't like them, but I otherwise let them run their course and don't take control.
No you are rested as if it were a normal dream. But it's not easy to keep focused on something while lucid dreaming, you will likely forget that you are in a dream and no longer be lucid.
I've had a productive coding session in a lucid dream at least once. But it was just a small number of lines of code (a few blocks) I was playing around with, and I had been thinking about it all day. The visual and semantic memory was sort of stuck in my mind, consciously and subconsciously. In any event, it was insanely precise (I was editing on a giant terminal screen) and when I woke up I typed in my refactored algorithm verbatim.
But reading text coherently in a dream is, AFAIU, quite uncommon as you suggest. I used to lucid dream regularly and deliberately as an adolescent. I would hesitate to say you can't focus in a lucid dream--consciously focusing on elements of the dream, or trying to shape the dream, is kind of the point of lucid dreaming. (Of course, what you have most control over is yourself.) But, yeah, you can't usually control things in such fine detail for the duration necessary to coherently manipulate it. Reading any non-trivial text in a dream isn't very common, lucid or not-lucid, AFAIU. Though, I would imagine it's more common for people with experience lucid dreaming.
I'm sure some people can read and write as much as they want, but at a certain point on the curve we're probably dealing with people with abnormal neurology. Sort of like how there's memory palaces and other mnemonic techniques, which anybody can learn, and then there's people with Hyperthymesia.
Something I tried testing once was practicing the guitar while in a lucid dream. I was really interested in whether I'd be able to practice inside a dream and see improvement outside of it. Unfortunately the one time I attempted this, the guitar didn't sound correct, and I woke up moments later. I'm still interested in whether it would be possible, but I unfortunately no longer have the ability to test it.
It should be feasible, given that mental practice seems to work in general (from both studies and anecdotes). When I've tried practicing piano in lucid dreams, I've found the wrong notes sounding even when I press the right keys to be distracting, but if you can ignore 'dream effects', the practice will probably help.
Sure. I've also had a couple non-lucid dreams where I've read a longish excerpt of text. (Memorable because of the extraordinary detail, and because it seemed original.) And I've certainly had non-lucid dreams where I've resolved abstract problems in some inarticulable, non-visual manner. And then there's the experience of your subconscious figuring something out and it pops into your conscious mind, which can happen when sleeping or awake.
I've had enough lucid dreams when I was kid to know the difference. These days lucid dreaming for me is rare and not deliberate--i.e. if I have the presence of mind to wake up in a dream, it's mostly by chance, not because I orchestrated it through habituation. It came mostly naturally as a kid, after I stumbled upon a reproducible technique. Adults usually have to practice at it, and I'm just too lazy (and too tired). The vast majority of my dreams now are non-lucid, or quasi-lucid (i.e. I'm not in deep sleep) such that I know it's not like a proper lucid dream. The experiences are quite different.
Speaking from experience, lucid dreaming is not as restful as normal sleep. Furthermore when I was lucid dreaming often, I would get much more regular bouts of sleep paralysis, which only happens to me when my sleep health has severely deteriorated.
I may disagree, as from my own experience and lucid dreamers I spoke to, lucid dream is not a rest state but more of the awake. After lucid dreaming I am as tired as I did not sleep at all, maybe even more.
I'm pretty sure there's distinction between lucid dreaming during REM sleep and something akin to day dreaming while falling in and out of sleep, which some might still call lucid dreaming. I've experienced both. In the latter you won't feel refreshed in the same way (or at all), similar to when stress or alcohol prevents restful sleep. (Stress or alcohol very well may have setup the conditions for the non-REM dreaming.) In the former you feel the same as you normally would.
In all seriousness I look forward to seeing exactly how much we can do while lucid dreaming. Also, what are the consequences? Does it cost you the nights rest? or could this be a life hack for getting more done in a day?