Why you should practice everyday and how to make that simple.

No matter what your guitar playing goals are: Practicing daily will help you get there faster. Sometimes that sentence scares people away. Let me assure you: I don‘t mean to imply that you need 3 hours of concentrated practice every day, but even as little as 5 -20 minutes will help you reach your guitar playing goals. To make absolutely sure we are on the same page here are four reasons why you should practice daily:

Reason 1: Some skills are trained best if trained regularly. 

Skills like ear training, scale knowledge and arpeggios are best trained every day, so that the knowledge sinks in and you are able to use this fluently without thinking. It‘s also much easier to ingrain the right technique into your playing if you focus on that every day.

Reason 2: You‘ll be tempted to make more once you have started.

Once you have started your practice routine for the day and are finished it‘s way more likely that you will play a bit more every day. This extra time is valuable and will help you to make great progress in a short amout of time.

Reason 3: You will feel more comfortable with your guitar in hand.

Another side effect is that you will get used to the feeling of th guitar in your hand. This feeling will help you in moving naturally with your guitar when you play for others and will make your playing feel easier, too.

Reason 4: More progress faster

It‘s easy: If you invest time you will get better. If you invest time every day, you will get better faster. There are other dials you can turn, but this is one of the easiest dials to turn. 

Now that you know that you should practice daily, you probably want to know how to make that simple? Here are four time tested suggestions with the accompanying reason why they help.

1.) Have your guitar ready to be played in under 30 seconds.

If you need more than 30 seconds to start a task the probability of you actually doing that task goes down dramatically. This works with nearly all activities and avoiding it gives you a great boost in the ability to practice daily.

2.) Have your guitar where you usually are.

If you have your guitar where you see it regularly that increases the chance that you take the time to grab it and play something on it. Once you have started playing switching to practicing is s small step and will feel easy to do. 

3.) Schedule a portion of your time to do it.

Habits form our life. Fortunately we can form our habits. Choose to make a habit out of playing/practicing your guitar. Great examples are: Practice every evening after dinner. Or: Practice every evening before dinner. Or: Practice when you come home from work or school.

Once you‘ve decided to grow this habit and made it easy to start practicing you will see increased results fast.

4.) Don‘t worry if you miss a day.

In the beginning growing habits are fragile. We should try to keep up with a good habit every day to make it nearly automatic. But things are sometimes quite chaotic and you will probably see days durich which practicing was no option. The best thing you can do is to have a go at it the next day without feeling bad about this. Don‘t beat yourself up about this. Just try to get into the habit of practicing daily again the next day. 

In conclusion: Investing time daily into your guitar playing will improve your progress. To make it more likely that you do that you should make guitar practice simple and form the habit of practicing.

These suggestions were presented to you by Hildesheims guitar school Rock Gitarre Hildesheim. The owner Rene Kerkdyk will help you reach your guitar playing goals. If you live near Hildesheim, Germany and want to learn to play guitar be sure to contact René.