How to Practice the Guitar Effectively Without Wasting Time

If you’re not sure how to practice the guitar effectively, read on…

I hear it often from guitar students and even guitarists: “I don’t have enough time to practice!”. The truth is that it’s never enough. Time is limited and life is so busy that there are days when playing the guitar feels like a luxury.

Not only that, there are endless cool things to learn: scales, licks, chords, riffs, techniques, genres, styles… We can see it as a constant battle, but we don’t have to think about it this way!

Here are 3 Solutions (out of many) for an Effective Guitar Practicing

1. Use your imagination
2. Change your mindset
3. Plan carefully

1. Use Your Imagination

There’s a famous story about the great pianist Arthur Rubinstein. Rubinstein taught himself to play a whole composition while travelling on a train for a few hours.

You can develop this kind of mental skill, and it means that you don’t need to have a guitar to practice it! Visualising the fretboard and moving your virtual fingers across it can be equal to a physical practice.

I’ve been using this method for decades now, and studies show that you can improve your performance by only using mental imagery exercises.

2. Change Your Mindset

You probably have 4 minutes a day to brush your teeth and take care of your hygiene. If so, there must be at least 5 minutes of “me time” when you take care of your mental state.

Many studies show the positive impact of music on our wellbeing, so playing the guitar can be seen as a daily meditation, or at least as a brush that cleans our thoughts once a day.

If you consider music and playing the guitar as a top priority that is vital to your life, I guarantee that you will find the time for it.

3. Plan Carefully

Because we don’t have enough time, we should plan the few minutes/hours we do have every week to make the most of it.

This means that focusing on small wins and achievable goals as part of a bigger process will make us feel that we are progressing and also being realistic about it.

You can spend decades learning anything you can, and yes, learning guitar is a life-long journey (I still learn something new every day).

But is that your true goal? How about setting some milestones along the way?

One milestone, for example, could be composing a piece of music that you’ll feel proud of, and then recording and sharing it with the world. Another milestone is finding your sound and style on the guitar.

These can be achieved by designing a road map, breaking it down into attainable stages, and then focusing on one stage at a time.

What do you think? Do these three tips help with understanding how to practice the guitar effectively?

This guitar blog post was about HOW to practice. If you’re looking for WHAT to practice, have a look at my #guitarshorts videos, like this 1-note guitar solo. You don’t need the guitar to think about creating, you can visualise it instead.

For more ideas, visit the following link where I post exlusive content on how to be more creative on the guitar. Or click on the following link to book live zoom guitar lessons.