Inconsistant Results During Astral Projection

So I want to start off giving a little backdrop of my experiences and how things started out for me and my astral projections.

My first experience with astral projection started around when I was 19 going on 20. This was a terrifying experience because I didn't know that I was even astral projecting but also my body was in "sleep paralysis". As a result I was completely conscious of everything around me but unable to move and heard whispering around me.

It was from this initial experience I began to have these periodical conscious episodes (that's what I like to refer to them as). It became so frequent I would that it happened 3 to 4 times a month. Like I said it was a terrifying experience to have no control over your body and hearing things when you shouldn't be hearing anything at all. Gradually I became able to gain use of my voice enough to make at noise which would wake my partner up and in turn they would wake me up.

Finally I got tired of the situation and began researching the topic of sleep paralysis. This to my surprise was a lot more common than I thought. Then I came across a site that said something along the lines of "Sleep Paralysis or Astral Projection?" Of course my interest was peaked so I began to research the new topic and found some people used the sleep paralysis as way of experimenting with projecting, this intrigued me.

For the last year I've been experimenting with what I learned about projecting and have been trying to put it to use. And I've so far have had varying result. Sometimes I remain stuck in conscious in my body. Sometimes I'm able to remember a whole projection other times I can only remember people, entities, or part of my astral projection. And the funny thing is I keep coming across two people. They keep trying to tell me there name's as if they need me to remember them. But the moment I "wake" (if you can call it that with still being conscious) from the projection I can't seem to remember their name's. It's like the feeling anyone would have when they try to remember something and say "it's on the tip of my tongue".

So my questions are:

Does anyone have tips/pointers on how to retain more memory when Astral projecting? And also tips on how to achieve a more successful projection. Because I have a feeling I've been "astral traveling" subconsciously.

Should I continue to pursue trying to find out who these 2 people are that are trying to give me there name's?

I would appreciate whatever feed back if possible, thank you.