It always seems like it’s the same story. “I don’t have time to practice. I don’t know what to practice. Am I really supposed to practice 3 to 5 hours a day?”
The issue that most of us have, including myself, is that our efforts are not focused clearly. We practice, but in the process we find ourselves being drawn to the external distractions and to the in adequacy‘s in our playing that we feel we need to address immediately. We are caught in a reactive state as opposed to a proactive state of mind.
This all may seem quite common knowledge, but how many of us actually stop to consider the effect that it has on our practice. We may acknowledge it for a moment but then we immediately feel the pressure that we put on ourselves to accomplish a long list of items that we know that we will not practice in a given day. What would happen if you were only to focus on one or maybe two topics for the day. Have you ever taken a song and spent one hour really dissecting the tune? Do you spend your time practicing at an incredibly slow tempo in order to be highly focused on the task at hand? Most of us have a difficult time because our attention is drawn so many things including those things that we wish that we could do now. For myself, I know this has left me in a state of paralysis. There’s been days where I’ve looked at the guitar and shrugged my shoulders and said, “ What’s the use? There’s too many damn things to practice. I encourage you, no, I challenge you to spend one hour focusing on one topic in your practice. Practice Less to gain more!
I hope you find this helpful! Check out www.bobrossguitar.com to follow my journey.