How To Stay Motivated When Learning Guitar

Do you struggle with staying motivated when learning guitar?

I just don't feel like practicing today. Other things need to be taken care of immediately; guitar practice can wait ....

Sounds familiar? All of us have been down that road before. We all know that setting musical goals is essential, but how do we do so? Set goals to stick to them without trailing off after a week or two?

Here are some steps I've taken to get myself to keep to my goals even when I feel like pushing it to the "next day."

First, I set bite-sized, teeny-tiny baby goals. Let's talk about guitar playing for a moment here. For instance, if I want to play jazz songs, I could either take a "shortcut" - dive headlong into a YT video titled "Learn Wes Montgomery's songs in 10min!" Or I could choose to learn some basic jazz chords first. I would give myself about a week or two to pick up the basic jazz shapes from memory.

The following goal would be to focus on learning a simple jazz song using those chords at a super slow tempo. And then speed it up a bit, say by 10BPM, the following week. I've found the latter approach more helpful in the long run than shortcuts and tricks for quick learning.

Once I've fixed a goal, I pen down a weekly schedule. It's considered good to have a set time (and place, too, if possible) for practice. Still, I find varying the time helps break an otherwise monotonous schedule. So, I'd say that's totally up to one's personal preference - play around and see what works for you. I try to get in half an hour of practice every day, and I break it down into chunks of around 5min, starting with finger warm-ups, and moving on to other stuff like chord changes and ear-training.

Playing along with a metronome is excellent as it helps one track the progress in terms of speed (for instance, playing smoothly at 50BPM this week, taking it up to 60BPM the next, and so on).

Having a timer to time your practice sessions also helps clock in the exact amount of time spent on practice, which aids in keeping on track. It feels good when you realize that your goal has been achieved, and these achievements help keep you motivated. However, this is hard for most beginners (and intermediate players sometimes) and requires effort.

Really all that's required is to try - even figuring out what and how to practice needs practice!

Thanks,

Sayanti.

Photo by Gabriel Gurrola on Unsplash