The Big Reason Why You’re Wasting Time During Guitar Practice And Not Getting Great Results From Your Guitar Practice Schedule
You aren’t getting as much results as you should be from your guitar practice schedule when you don’t consistently track your progress.
Tracking your progress each week tells you exactly which practice items are working (i.e. helping you reach your musical goals as you practice guitar) and which are not.
So, you may be doing plenty of guitar practice and getting better overall, but you could be improving your guitar skills A LOT faster by practicing less of the things that slow down your progress and more of the things that make you progress quickly.
In addition...
Some guitar skills simply need more practice time to improve... while other guitar skills need less.
And besides... some of your guitar skills are ‘actual’ weaknesses (i.e. bottlenecks that keep you from reaching the next milestone in your guitar playing)...
While other skills are things you’ve already reached a high level with and simply keep practicing because they are fun.
Tracking your musical progress every week gives you the clarity you need to determine those things about your guitar practice.
To determine which items need to be kept or removed from your guitar practice schedule, ask yourself the following (before you practice guitar again):
Is this practice item helping me reach my long-term or short-term goals?
If the answer is no, remove it (if you want to learn it just for fun, keep it as a very low priority).
If the answer is yes, then:
- How close am I to mastering this item? (Note: by ‘mastering’, I mean as it relates to your goals. That’s the only level of ‘mastery’ you need to worry about.)
- How can I integrate this item into a practice routine in order to get the greatest possible benefit as I practice guitar (i.e. how long should I practice it, what is its priority over other things, etc..)?
Once you have determined which guitar practice items are helping you the most (and have removed the ones that don’t help), track as many areas of your guitar playing as possible. This helps you identify even more closely how effective you are being when you practice guitar.
Here are a few examples of what areas of your playing to track as you practice guitar:
- Guitar technique: maximum playing speed, 2-hand synchronization, picking hand articulation, cleanliness of playing
- Music theory: knowledge of intervals, knowledge of chords, knowledge of scales, ability to integrate music theory and guitar technique
- Rhythm guitar playing: palm muting consistency, timing, cleanliness of playing
- Fretboard visualization for scales and chords. (Yep, that is something that can be tracked via special tests designed for that purpose.)
Tracking these things helps you get much more results as you practice guitar... (without needing to increase your guitar practice time). However, this is just the beginning to maximizing your guitar practice productivity.
Want to make your guitar practice so effective that you become a much better player every time you sit down with your instrument? Read this article on how to stop wasting guitar practice time and become a great guitarist fast.
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