How to structure your practice and maximize your time

Often times we get hung up on the what to practice, many times ignoring other elements of guitar that make the music we play come together. Sometimes we focus the entire time on a song, chords, scales, or skill in one session leaving other elements hanging and lagging. When this happens we become unbalanced in our playing. Pretty soon the hour or two we set aside is gone. Here are some suggestions on how to structure your practice sessions to develop a well balanced skill set.

Grab a timer:

Setting a timer will start building a habit of of not dwelling on certain things, that take up our time and leave us undeveloped in other areas. This will help you maximize time you set aside to practice. Sometimes life has a way of keeping us from our hobbies or maybe soon to be profession. Being efficient in our practice time can help speed up development.

Plan out the practice ahead of time:

When you are first starting out you want to know everything. The reality is that playing guitar is a skill. It needs to be developed over time with some patience. It's very rare to be able to pick up a guitar and be awesome in a month. Planning what you want to practice ahead of time and coupling that with time blocks will help. Certain times may be skills focused, others will be music theory, or mainly learning a new song.

Be consistent:

Try to be consistent. I don't mean practice the same thing everyday. Try to set your time aside at the same time everyday. There is a lot to learning guitar that revolves around habit. Building good habits can lead to great skills and knowledge down the road. If you practice at the same time everyday, you will have more control over you daily schedule, and surprisingly you may find that you have more time.

Add variety:

This is a very important part so that we keep motivated. If we keep practicing the same things over and over, after a while we are going to get board, and maybe at some point set the guitar down and forget about it after a while. Staying fresh and adding variety to our practice will keep the music going.

Use a calendar/journal:

Using a calendar is a great way to map out your practice days, and setting goals on when you want to achieve certain mile stones. This is also a great way to keep track of how much time we spend in certain areas. After some time you will find that you won't need to use a calendar as much, because as our skill develops playing becomes more natural. Movements, chords and scales we once saw as difficult become fluid and less deliberate.

What should the session look like? Lets start with the plan, figure out how many days you can set aside for practice and how much time. lets say we have enough free time in week to dedicate 5 days. In those 5 days we have 1 hour to sit and play. Here is what the hour could look like,

10 Minutes of warm up-This is where you can throw in scales. Practicing scales can help greatly with finger coordination, and is a good way to warm up.

20 Minutes songs-Here is an opportunity to practice chord progression. As you learn more songs you will be able to switch out with every session.

10 Minutes skill development-Use this time to work on a skill that is giving you difficulty. String transition, maybe a chord combination, or part of a song that you are learning.

15 Minutes new song focus-This is where you practice a new song. if you have an area in your schedule where you focus on a new song you will constantly add to your playlist. Once you have the song down, add a new one to learn.

5 Minutes-Just jam, relax and try stringing things together. Just play, this where our creativity comes out. Try playing a song you know with some added elements, maybe change tempo, or toss in a scale over some chords. Have fun.

Now to keep things from getting boring, change things up day to day. For example instead of running scales for the first 10 minutes we add new skills or chord progressions, and alter the time. Another way of keeping things fresh, is playing songs we know for the entire session or focus on new songs. The point is to create a habit of playing guitar. Structured practice time will help us progress faster and the results will be seamless chord transition, and natural looking scale runs, and a great playlist of songs to jam to.