Learn How To Practice Effectively By Setting Guitar Goals 🚀

A valuable skill at any guitar level to unlock your potential!

Hey, how you doing? Justin Sandercoe here.

Welcome to Effective Practice Module! I'm so excited to have you here. :) Learning how to practice effectively is one of the most valuable skills for guitar players! It can help optimize your guitar journey at any stage!

It's essential to work out where want to go with your guitar - but this requires personal reflection! Only you can set your own guitar goals. Your guitar goals should be the aim of your practice sessions and exercises. This way - you'll always stay on track and you'll be inspired to keep going and learning.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to set your guitar goals and optimize your practice. We'll take a look at big picture goals and I'll give you some tips on how you can develop this idea. We'll also dive deeper into short-term goals and understanding specific practice elements to help you reach your ultimate guitar goal!

Setting Guitar Goals - The Big Picture

Practicing the guitar effectively is essential for all guitar players. Whether you're a beginner guitar player, or a serious professional, or anywhere between!

We all should try and make most of our practice time. Why? Because none of us have that much time to practice! Let's first take a look at how you should set your long-term goals by looking at the big picture.

Deciding where you want to go is one of the most important decisions in your guitar journey. The clearer you can make your destination - the better! If you don't know what to improve, you won't be able to measure your progress.

If you're teaching yourself, make it easy by being clear about what you want to learn. Write it down. Then, think about the skills and knowledge you need to get there.

Picking a Good Guitar Teacher Is Important

Having a good teacher will make a big difference in your learning journey. A good teacher is someone that understands the various paths available to reach your big picture goal. They'll show you the right way to get there, and a great teacher might even show you cool shortcuts. :)

A common mistake made is a teacher teaching what they're into instead of what their student needs. This is a mistake I made many, many times when I started teaching. Beware of teachers that do not try and understand where YOU want to go. It's about what YOU need to do to get there - this is important!

💡 Having concrete goals will help both you and your teacher. And these goals come from you. So take 30 minutes, reflect, dig a little deeper and find out what your guitar goal is before setting it.

Common Guitar Goals

Everyone's goals will be different, but some common big picture kind of goals might be:

To be able to play some easy songs with my mates at a BBQ.
To play regular gigs with a rock band.
To make a living from playing guitar.
To be the greatest guitar player ever to walk the face of the Earth.

💬 Join the discussion. What does your guitar goal look like? I'd love to know! Login & leave a comment in the discussion area - maybe you'll get inspired by other guitar players. :)

Each of these requires completely different paths and different skills. And many guitar journeys will take similar paths. For example, you'll need to learn your minor pentatonic scales if you want to play Blues guitar or rock. But - it might not be a necessity to a classical guitar player!

This is why this decision part is so important - it all depends on you! Help yourself reach your guitar goal by knowing where you're going!

If you're not clear about the purpose of practicing a specific guitar exercise, don't practice it! It's as simple as that. If someone, anyone, including me, suggests practicing anything - question it! When you have an answer that makes sense for your needs - then start working on it.

Setting Guitar Goals - Short-Term Goals

Always decide what to practice to help you reach your big goal. You'll guide your decisions towards completing your guitar goal.

Short-term guitar goas are more specific and measurable. Let's say you want to focus on learning some jazz chords. You might define completion as knowing the 10 Basic Jazz Shapes from memory. Then, you'll make using them in a jazz song your next goal.

Or - you might want to get your scale picking up to 16th notes at 150 in position 1. And once you reach the goal - decide to try and get all five positions to that speed. Get it?

Sure some things don't have set goals like that. Some guitar skills need practice - and it all depends on the exercise.

⭐It's a great feeling to realize that you have achieved your goal. It'll help you stay motivated. For many aspiring guitar players, this is the hardest thing to do!

Some Useful Guitar Philosophy

The more you know, the more things you realize you don't know. Socrates told a story once and described knowledge as standing in a circle. Inside the circle are things you know. Outside this circle is what you don't know.

The more stuff you learn, the more the circle gets bigger. As it grows, you realize the endless learning possibilities!

Once you get into the habit of forming and achieving goals - you'll find it spreads into your whole life. This is a great thing!

I meet many people that feel they never get anywhere in their life. Mainly because they never set out in a particular direction. Then the problem comes in deciding which direction YOU want to go in. Only YOU can determine that, and it's often the most challenging of the learning process.

It is a lot simpler to get what you want if you know what it is. The other option is just bumbling around until you stumble on it! You will become better just for having given this some thought! So do it now - grab a pen and write down things you want to do - see if you can define a big goal.

Work out the things you would need to be able to do to get there. Then, work out what things to practice to get your journey underway. Just try it - everything takes practice - even working out what to practice! :)

Next lesson - we'll take a look at deciding what to practice to get better at guitar.