Practice Time and Schedule

As covered in Part I - On Technique, playing guitar is a nervous system activity, and any improvement will happen during rest periods while the nervous system adapts to the new stresses placed upon it. So, we need clearly indicate what we want to improve to the brain and nervous system, and then step back and let the brain and body sort things out for us. A good schedule will ensure that we’re not wasting time.

The ideal practice schedule:

  1. Practice hard for 20 minutes.

  2. Take a short break.

  3. Go back to step 1, and work on something different. You can repeat 20-minute chunks, but they should be spaced out during the day (see Repeating 20-minute chunks below).

Note

Practice as long as you want to, but be sure to break it into these 20-minute chunks. This is key.

Why 20 minutes?

  • Playing is mostly a mental activity, and so you need to ensure your mind and body are at peak concentration.

  • There is a physical component to playing, so rest is essential for smaller muscles.

If you’ve done focused work during your 20 minutes, that’s sufficient for your brain and nervous system to process and adapt during your rest period.

Tip

Get a timer, set it to 20 minutes, and at the end of 20 minutes, stop!

Using 20 minutes

Practicing can be broken down into two massively broad categories:

  1. Motor skills: picking technique, fretting technique, chord shifts, arpeggios … pure technique, the nuts and bolts of playing.

  2. Repertoire: new songs, chord progressions, studies, licks, improvisation, solos … your real playing.

Each of those use the 20-minute rule differently.

Motor skills

Acquisition

If you’re working on a brand new motion, such as trying to increase your picking speed, 20 minutes is long enough (maybe too long!) for you to experiment, and ensure that you’re not accidentally engaging any extra muscles that shouldn’t be involved. It can take a while for your nervous system to establish and refine the optimum signals and pathways. You can work hard for 20 minutes, but any longer than that will likely be wasted effort.

Refinement

If you are refining an existing motion, such as picking a difficult lick, you can spend 20 minutes on that single motion, or you can try interleaving practice – that is, work on that motion for a few minutes, and then switch to a completely different motion and work on that for a few minutes, then back and forth. Within a given 20-minute chunk, I’d suggest interleaving maximum four items, because that way you get 2 reps of 2 minutes per item, plus another few minutes for some quick experiments.

I suggest doing a completely different motion because it’s easy to accidentally work on the same technique within practice sessions, and overtire your nerves. For example, if you’re working on one difficult lick, and then working on arpeggios, both of those might be pushing your picking skills to the limit, which might be hard to manage. So, instead of picking everything, you could try fretting-hand-only legato technique, or chord shifts, etc. (Note: like everything I’ve presented here and elsewhere, it’s up to you!)

With either concentrated or interleaved practice, be on the lookout for fatigue, either physical or mental. Those will lead to “false technique” – your body recruiting extraneous muscles and motions to accomplish the task, which, while giving you the illusion of progress, are actually harmful and will need to be undone!

Repertoire

By “repertoire”, I mean anything you’d use for performance or shows: full songs, solos, licks, lines. For all of these, I’ll call a set of notes (a measure, a section, whatever), a “passage”, and practicing repertoire is generally practicing and perfecting passages.

For repertoire, the 20-minute rule is also applicable. Take a passage and work on that for 20 minutes, then stop.

See Practicing Repertoire for more.

Taking a break

When done your 20-minute session, do nothing for a couple of minutes. Close your eyes and relax – don’t look at your phone, don’t rush on to the next thing. This mindful pause gives you and your mind time to process what you worked on during that practice session. 1 I find this pause extremely calming, and it somehow feels productive, even though I’m doing nothing! See if it works for you.

Then start your “regular break”. Stretch, have some water, and shake things out. Reflect and make notes on the last 20 minutes. Then relax for whatever duration is good for you. You might just need a few minutes, or you might need half an hour. Here are a few thoughts to help you find that duration:

  • You feel ready, mentally and physically, for the next 20-minute session – whatever “ready” means for you! Hard technical work might call for a longer break to let things relax.

  • The Pomodoro Technique of time management suggests taking 5-minute breaks after every 25-minute session, and then taking a 15-to-30 minute break every four sessions.

A good break should leave you refreshed and still in-the-groove.

Repeating 20-minute chunks

For motor skill acquisition, it’s very good to do short bursts of practice a few times a day. Do a short practice session, take a break for an hour or so, and then repeat that same session. Do that a few times.

The rest period allows your body to make some quick adjustments. Don’t expect to see improvement within the same day, but after a longer rest, things might come together. Especially with interleaved practice (of a few items), you can cover a lot of ground.

20 minutes is just a suggestion

Though I’ve said “20 minutes” a few times above, it’s not carved in stone (nothing is, really). The key points are mentioned above: you need to be active, alert, mindful, relaxed, curious, and interested in what you’re doing! Sometimes, it’s extremely interesting and useful to work on something for up to an hour, as you try different methods, musical expressions, physical approaches, etc.

Tip

Never practice mindlessly.

Practicing on autopilot is not practicing, it’s just moving your limbs and making sounds. It can feel like practice, because you’re working hard, dammit, but it’s not. Keep your brain and body engaged – never “grind away” at it. Grinding doesn’t hone your technique, it just dulls your brain and musicality.

Always be mindful, and always be musical.

Day-to-day Schedule

If your daily practicing is going well, you will soon get a feel for what kind of schedule you’ll need to keep.

Sometimes things need some “baking time” to set. I’ve found that if I practice a given technique very hard for a few days, I can take a day or so break from it, and work on something else. And some pieces of repertoire need to seep into the unconscious.

With that said, it’s much better to work on something bit by bit over several days, rather than cram one long session. The repeated exposure and rest is what causes your brain to grow.

Don’t forget fun

With all of the above, it’s easy to forget that you need time to just play, enjoy it, and to be musical. This can be anything like the following:

  • playing through your repertoire, either in performance or for your own enjoyment

  • playing along with records or backing tracks, really being expressive

  • free improvisation

  • writing songs

  • singing, playing other instruments

  • actively listening to stuff that really gets your motor going

  • making any kind of glorious noise

Fun is important. Have some!

1

The importance of taking a complete break and letting your mind organize itself is discussed in the super podcast How to Learn Skills Faster | Huberman Lab Podcast #20, at around the 48-minute mark.