Getting better at guitar doesn’t mean you have to practice for 5 hours per day. Here’s how to improve your skills with only limited practice time:
Plan Your Practice Schedule Ahead Of Time
Deciding what to practice moments before (or during) guitar practice leads to wasted time spent trying to think of what to work on. Planning your practice time in advance allows you to determine a plan for exactly which items to practice to reach specific goals. This way all you need to do is practice what you set out for yourself. This also reduces the amount of mindless noodling and distraction that occurs when you are struggling to think of what to practice in the moment.
Work On Things That Improve Many Skills At Once
Some guitar practice items make more sense to practice than others when you have limited time. For instance, if you use your time to work on moving from one open chord to the next, you don’t improve the same skills that comes with practicing improvising with scales does. With limited time, it becomes important to focus on the things that help you improve your overall playing as much as possible.
Take the time to sit down and review all the different items you want to practice to find out: 1. Which ones improve the most variety of skills at once and 2. Which ones help you reach your musical goals fastest. Then plan your practice time around them.
Track Your Practice Closely
Don’t just practice and hope that what you are working on will help you get better. Track the results you are getting each week to find out which items are helping you and which ones are not. Tracking your progress every week also identifies which aspects of your playing are strong and weak so you don’t need to waste time practicing things you’ve already mastered.
Using all of these ideas in your guitar practice approach helps you make a lot of progress no matter how much time you practice each day.
However, there are a lot of other ways to improve your guitar practice efficiency. Check out this guitar practice methods article to learn more ways to quickly improve your guitar playing skills.
