When do you pray?

I have also wondered what is the best way to make God notice our prayers. Even assuming a growing number of atheists, the number of prayers S/He is getting from the world alone will be in millions. Extrapolating from my own experience, each of those prayers will have complicated sub-prayers and at least two or three sub-levels of mini requests and what not!

My training for prayer started early in child hood. In the typical Hindu way. So, it is more ritual and does not lay much emphasis on the content. Having prayed routinely for many years in the morning, my prayers unconciously even today start with 'Should study well and do well in exams'!

It is a different matter that today's exams are much more complicated than those school days. Solving trigonometry or integral calculus will be quite easy for God to facilitate, but now...?