If you're not getting enough out of your guitar practice, or you're just not practising enough because you can't get motivated, here's a simple challenge that should change how picking up the guitar feels.
I think the main reason people struggle to pick the guitar up is that they don't feel as far along as they'd like to be, and they have to face that. Or they don't think they'll make any progress in the time they sit down for. This challenge should get rid of both.
The challenge: 30 days, an hour a day ▶ 0:48
For 30 days, practise either an hour a day or twice as long as you normally practise, whichever is higher.
If you don't have time for that, fair enough. That's up to you. This is for people who are serious about making progress.
Yes, it sounds like the most unoriginal challenge ever: practise more. But it's not quite the same thing, and the easiest way to explain why is a diet I went on recently. I wasn't massively overweight, I just had a few kilos I wanted to lose, and I set myself 30 days to lose three or four. I did it. Then I drank loads of beer at the weekend, but that aside, it taught me a lot that relates very directly to practice.
Take practice time off the list of problems ▶ 1:49
The most important thing is that it simply gets you practising more. It's all well and good watching lessons on what you need to improve and how. If you don't spend time practising them, it doesn't matter what you're watching. So the first benefit is that you remove probably the most important variable in your progress as a limiting factor.
The first week: the guitar's version of water weight ▶ 2:10
In the first week or even the first few days of a diet, you lose quite a lot of weight compared with the rest of the month. That's water weight and glycogen. It's pretty much free, and it makes you feel good early on.
Something similar happens with practice. The first few days might feel a bit rough, but you're starting the snowball:
- You stop paying the relearning tax. Every time you pick the guitar up after a gap, you have to remind yourself where you were, what you were working on, how that part goes. Practise every day for a decent amount of time and you remember where you were within a few minutes.
- You build conditioning. Fingertips, muscles, muscle memory. If you don't play a lot you probably don't have very tough fingertips, and this first week helps.
- You get warmed-up playing time. I'd argue it takes 15 or 20 minutes before you really feel warmed up. With an hour, that's at least half an hour or 40 minutes of prime playing time. If you only play 10 or 20 minutes, you might never find out that another 10 minutes would make your playing noticeably better.
The middle weeks: guitar becomes part of who you are ▶ 3:43
In the following weeks of the diet, I was eating the same, fairly balanced thing every day. For the first week or two I didn't enjoy it, I just suffered through it. Then it became normal. It became part of my identity: I'm someone who eats healthy food, at least at the moment.
The same thing happens when you practise every day. Being a regular guitar player becomes part of who you are. Not in a way you need to tell everyone about. You just don't have to think about it. You get in from work and pick up the guitar, or you play in the morning or on your lunch break, whenever suits you. You stop worrying about whether you want to play. You just do.
30 days also gives you an end in sight. If I set you a one-year challenge, there's no way you'd do it. A one-week challenge, and you'd wonder what it's going to achieve. 30 days is a nice middle point.
And remember those two reasons people avoid the guitar? If you don't normally practise much, a week or two in you should be playing better than you ever have, and your fingers should feel dialled in. You'll approach things with confidence, and even if you can't play certain things yet, you'll see progress.
What to practise each day ▶ 5:41
No more than one topic per half hour. So with an hour a day, that's two topics at most. You want to see progress in the things you're working on. It could be a song, your improvising, theory, anything.
Days away and missed days ▶ 6:06
If you're away for a day, there's still stuff you can do: music theory or ear training, for example. The Theory Trainer and Ear Trainer are both free on the site. At the very least, if you really can't do anything else, watch some educational guitar content. I'll let you get away with that, but not every day, and it has to be as long as your practice would have been. So if that's an hour, you're watching an hour of lessons on the train or wherever.
If you miss a day for whatever reason, one missed day is okay. Two in a row and you start again.
If you get to the end and you're still feeling good, try 66 days. They say it takes 66 days to build a habit, so if you really want to cement things, push for that.
Start today and tick it off ▶ 7:05
Unless you've got a very, very good reason, start tomorrow. Better still, start today. Don't start in a week or two weeks, because it won't happen. Don't trust yourself to come back to it.
Make a little note somewhere, a notepad or a notes app, and just tick off each day. You don't need to write down what you did, though you can. The practice log works well for this. It's also worth recording a short video of yourself playing at the start and the end so you can see where you've got to.
I highly doubt anyone will get to the end of this and feel worse for it. Decide on your two topics, tick off day one today, and have a go.
