The human mind can easily get distracted. You can probably remember moments where you were watching TV or reading a book and suddenly realise you haven’t really been paying attention to what you were doing. If you are tired and you are trying to practice a new skill, it’s even more likely that you find it difficult to concentrate.

When you are playing guitar, you might come up with a new idea or you remember you needed to turn the dishwasher on and you get up to ‘quickly’ do that. As you are ‘just doing a hobby’, it’s all too easy to get up and do a small chore, only to realise you didn’t end up practicing enough that time.

Therefore, in order for your practice to succeed, you need to add more structure for your learning. Here are some tips on how to do this.

Set Aside a Time

Plan your guitar practice just like you plan any other activity. It is much easier to stick to your plan, if you have one in the first place! When you pick a time slot and the length of practice, remember to think your own personal learning style. Not everyone has the patience to practice for an hour straight, so you may prefer to split your session to 30-minute or even 15-minute segments. Indeed, the latest research supports the idea of dividing your tasks for shorter segments.

Divide Your Practice

Now that you have set the time and decided how long you want to practice at each session, it’s a good idea to divide your practice sessions further. The idea is to ensure you focus on one thing at a time and don’t jump from chord progression to scales.

Let’s say you have decided to have two 30-minute sessions during one day. In the first 30 minutes, you can first spend 15 minutes repeating the things you learned last time you practiced and spend the other 15 minutes learning new chords.

In the next 30-minute session, spend the first quarter practising scales and the final quarter playing a specific song, for instance.

If you don’t know how to divide your learning, then consider adding some of these ideas to your sessions:

• Practicing chords
• Practicing strumming
• Learning scales
• Learning licks
• Playing songs
• Improvising

Time Yourself

Make sure you set a timer, to ensure you spend the right amount of time on each point. You can use your phone’s timer or even get a simple kitchen timer for yourself. If you feel your mind wander or you get an idea, you can always write it down for later, but try to make sure you don’t start doing anything else.

If you feel like you just simply can’t concentrate, stop the timer and stand up. Walk around the room – or go outside – for five minutes, trying to clear your head and try again!

Change Your Session Structure

Although the above ideas bring a lot more structure to your sessions, remember to mix and match them. You don’t want to keep doing the same thing every single day, as this can easily become boring.

Try changing the length of your sessions and focus on a few different things each time. Play on your own, watch online guitar lessons, play with friends and remember to read about music theory as well! This way practicing stays structured yet different and you will learn faster as a result.