Progress Report and a Thought Process Question

Progress Report
I am now three days into the second circle with 210 problems completed. Here's some things I've noticed so far:

• My calculation seems to be more quick and more accurate. Still far from perfect (even on level 10-20), but much improved over the first circle. I remember struggling to calculate out a few problems during the first circle, but many of these I zipped through with little effort.
• I seem to be recognizing more patterns than before. I think Don mentioned his increased "fluency" with rook and knight mates after getting into the program, and that is a pattern that I also had trouble with in the first circle. Now I seem to be doing much better with it. Improved pattern recognition also helps reduce my calculation since I see more winning lines instead of trying to calculate deeper and deeper looking for the win that I had missed a few moves earlier in my calculations.
• Many of the level 10-20 problems I zip through in well under a minute (many I get in under 15 seconds), but I still am missing a few problems here and there and sometimes have to spend several minutes on some. I guess those patterns are not yet burned into my brain enough yet, so hopefully by circle three they will be second nature.

I regret that I don't have a USCF rating so as to measure my improvement in the MDLM program. That will sort of take away from my "success story" since it will never be clear how much I have improved.

I just figured out how to get the per-level stats out of CT-Art, so here's my stats from Circle 1:
Level 10: 96%
Level 20: 91%
Level 30: 74%
Level 40: 69%
Level 50: 67%
Level 60: 55%
Level 70: 60%
Level 80: 57%
Level 90+: 55%

Stats so far from Circle 2:
Level 10: 99%
Level 20: 94% (in progress)

As I go forward in the program, it will be interesting to see how my thought process and such changes versus the earlier circles (hence the major reason for this blog!).

A Thought Process Question
If you are an improving mid-range class player, I highly recommend reading the work of Dan Heisman, a well-known chess coach. In particular, his Novice Nook articles at Chess Cafe are very instructive (be sure to check out the archives for his series).

Anyway, I believe one of my biggest chess weaknesses is in my thought process. Heisman talks about playing "real chess", which basically involves checking that prior to making your move you can adequately meet all of your opponent's replies. It is pretty simple. Just visualize the board after your move, see what moves your opponent might have (forced mates, material wins, etc.), and if you overlooked something, come up with a better move. If you don't do this, you are playing what Heisman calls "hope chess": you make your move hoping that you can meet your opponent's reply, whatever that may be. To be a strong player, you have to play real chess 100% of the time. If you only check your opponents' replies 95% of the time, you will lose a lot of games due to that "risky" 5%.

So here's the question. I know I need to do it. I know how to go about doing it. But for some reason I just cannot do it. How does one go about learning this skill? I am thinking I should write down a simple thinking process and play a few games against the computer and check off each step in the thinking process as I go. Hopefully that will help, but I've tried concentrating hard on doing it, but I always forget about it and slip back into my gutter days of not thinking about my opponent's replies carefully enough. So what is a poor chess patzer to do? Suggessions welcome!