Practice & tips

Everyone · 3 min read

Building a practice routine that actually sticks

Ten focused minutes on five days beats an hour on a Sunday. Here's how to build the habit.

Attach it to something you already do

New habits stick when they hang off existing ones. Straight after school, straight after dinner, straight after brushing teeth — pick one and keep it fixed. The decision about when to practise is the part that gets skipped, so remove the decision.

Keep the guitar out

A guitar in a case under a bed gets played once a week. A guitar on a stand in the living room gets picked up every day. A cheap stand is the single best value purchase in guitar teaching.

A ten-minute template

When time is short, this order works well.

  • 2 minutes — warm up: a scale or a simple finger exercise, slowly.
  • 5 minutes — the hard bit: the one passage that isn't working yet.
  • 3 minutes — play something you enjoy, all the way through.

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