No Time to Practice Guitar Audio
I was looking over some of the questions from a recent survey I did, and one of the big ones was not a question at all. It was more of a cry of desperation…
I don’t have time to practice my guitar…
With work, kids, and the 100 other “must do” activities that we have to cram into a day, sometime there seems to be little time left over for guitar.
Now I could go into all kinds of time management ideas to help you organize your entire life…but I can’t say as I have mastered all of those myself.
But what I am going to give you are a couple of small ideas you can implement right away to help you spend some more quality time with your good friend the guitar.
Make your guitar visible and easily accessible
If every time you want to play guitar you have to dig it out of the closet…out of it’s case, get it all tuned up, etc… Chances are a lot less that you are actually going to play the thing.
Guitar Stand
So one great investment you can make is a guitar stand. That way your guitar is out at all times, and you can grab it easily and be jamming in seconds.
Music Stand
A second great investment would be a music stand where you keep any material you are currently working on.
Not everything you are practicing is in printed form, but those materials that are can be ready to go when you are.
Micro practicing is the key to progress for the time starved guitarist
How much time you dedicate to the guitar really depends on your goals.
I have had a few private students in the past who expressed an interest in being professional musicians…but said they couldn’t practice more than a couple of days per week for about 20 minutes.
OK, in that case, it’s probably time to think about a different career option.
But making progress and having fun on the instrument doesn’t take a 3 hour per day commitment that an aspiring professional guitarist may need to make.
You would be surprised to see how much progress you can make practicing 20 minutes per day. But here is the key point…
…it doesn’t need to be 20 minutes in a row. Can you find two 10 minute practice times during the day. How about four 5 minute time periods.
Now that you can grab your guitar easily since it’s out in the open on a guitar stand you can practice when…
- waiting for water to boil when fixing dinner
- during commercials when watching TV
- when waiting for your wife to finish getting ready to go out
…I’m going to pay for that one 🙂
I could go on, but if you just think of taking advantage of little small practice times every day, you can make progress. And lack of progress is one of the main frustrations most people have when learning guitar.
But the key is daily practice. Not 2 hours per day on Saturday and Sunday, and nothing during the rest of the week.
Chunk it down. And if that means that you can only get one small 5 minute practice time in during the day, than that is better than nothing.
So go out and grab yourself a guitar and music stand, and start putting the power micro practicing to work for you.
