How to Focus (For Guitar Practice)

Let me ask you something.

What was the longest time you spent playing a video game in a day? 1 hour? 4 hours? 8?!

After that amount of time, did you not improve your character? Did you level up? Did you get the sword?

The answer is probably yes (or you'd quit because it's super hard).

This is no accident. And the way you got the thing is because you just sat down and paid attention for a set amount of time. Did you switch to another game after 15 minutes? Did you check your phone every 10? Probably not, or you'll never finish the game. (Sorry to call out your steam library).

The number one way to succeed at something is your ability to focus.

So if you tell me you have a hard time focusing but you can play a video game for hours on end, I don't want to hear it.

Now there's more going on there because video games are highly addicting, but let's pretend that's not in the picture. How can we manufacture that same level of focus? You just have to set up a bunch of things in your physical space to make that happen.

I came up with three categories of focus.

Vision Focus

As far as getting your motivation, let's make sure we have a big life vision in mind. What does your long term day to day look like with the guitar? Not your next 3 month or 1 year goals of playing x amount of songs. What do you want to do with it? Do you want to memorize a bunch to entertain people at Christmas? Do you want to learn a lot for your own sake? Do you want to finish pieces to relieve the day's stress? Do you want to improv?

I say vision and not goals because I want you to think all the way to the end. Be the old person who's good at guitar because every little goal along the way is just a stepping stone that could go on forever, not the end result. See it as part of your life.

This should calm you down instead of rushing for goals but also let you know that this should be a daily activity.

After that, there's two other levels of focus I want you to think about.

Macro Level Focus

This is a fancy way of saying what song you want to do next. I'm a huge proponent of going for songs that inspire you first and not techniques for technique's sake. If you need to do a particular drill or warmup for that song, then go for it, but having the song at least gives you a reason to do any drill required (and ideally a deadline).

What's important with this is that you have to stick with this song until you're done with it. Done could mean performing it at full speed without mistakes or even performing it in a concert setting.

What this also means is that when you have your practice session, you SHOULD NOT be noodling around with other songs (you know, those bits you play when you get bored and they're easy to you now). You should also not be trying to learn 5 songs at once. You could, but it will take longer. If you have the time you could be learning one song per week or every 2 weeks. That's a pretty good speed.

Micro Level Focus

Ok here's the meat and potatoes (yum).

So we have a song. Designate how long you want to practice it (up to an hour max) and during that time, you only focus on that song. You can even break it down to a specific part of the song. If it helps to write out a mini todo list then do it. Write it on paper.

If you take the hour route, please split it up into 20 minute chunks. If you can sit for longer, great, but I really think people need to move more and your brain needs time to absorb new things.

This is all a warm up routine for your brain. Visualize things going well. Do some jumping jacks. Shake out the tension like you're a gymnast about to perform. It seems silly, but you won't go into the practice session flat.

Here are a few practice notes (from Nathan Mills/Beyond the Guitar)

• Make zero mistakes. (Play as slowly as needed).

• Use a metronome to slow things down if and when you need it. Obey it.

• Run through things as many times as needed (no mistakes) to make sure you get it. At least 5 times.

One weird tip that I've been wanting to mention.

• Use a mini whiteboard. What do you do with this? Something like "I practiced for 20 minutes". "I worked on measures 12-16 at 150 bpm for 20 minutes."

• Why this? So I got this from Chris Deleon, game dev teacher. He has an audiobook on productivity, and the concept is super simple. What you're doing is writing this in personal past tense. Like this:

• "I practiced measures 1-5 at tempo 100bpm 10 times"

• What you write hasn't happened yet, but you do this so that you don't make it a lie. There's something about seeing what you've committed to and wanting to make sure it comes true.

• When you're done, you can erase it, and probably write that you're taking a break, and do it again. This is a one step todo list. Remember how I said we're distracted? The fewer things in our bucket, the better. Don't worry about dinner, the next measure, the huge list of songs you could be doing or anything like that. Write down what you have to do next, do it, and repeat the process. This is no sillier than a 3 step todo list, but this narrows your focus down even more. Keep them separate.

• I'm going to side step any arguments to this and say that if you've been having issues with focusing in the past, then you at least owe it to yourself to give it a shot. Another alternative is using a piece of paper and scratching off the next steps. (I got a little white board for 9 bucks on Amazon).

Important: Dealing with your phone

While you're practicing, let's just say it's an hour, you have a rule. You're either allowed to practice…or do nothing at all. This may be hard if you're staring at tabs on your phone or computer, but what I mean is do NOT check your phone. DO NOT SCROLL ANYTHING. If you hit a roadblock, stand up and shake things out. If your hands cramp, wait. If you need to stare at a wall, then your body and brain need that time. This is new information here. You wouldn't do a heavy set of squats and in between see how many jumping jacks you can do. Your mind needs rest just as much as your body.

This includes your rest time. So if you have an hour total, which is 3 chunks of 20 minutes, then your 5-10 minute breaks are meant to do nothing. Meditate, take a nap, do pushups, pace around your house.

I'm going to rant about phones. Scrolling through any feed is not passive. When in history have we been able to have so much information pass our faces? Never. That's not good, and it wrecks your ability to concentrate on anything. When was the last time you read a book?

I also see people on Reddit confused as to what steps to take. The steps are probably not much more than "sit down and practice for a long period of time," but that's hard to do today. Save your brain, your attention span and your guitar playing by doing this mini detox. Your practice time should be sacred.

Think about guitarists from the 70/80s or whoever you look up to. Whether or not they had a teacher, they had to come home and practice. There probably wasn't much else to do, so these people were clocking hours of practice time. Be like that.

Now Go Focus

There are no secrets. Even if all you did was sit down for 1 hour per day and just try to learn a song. You'll get it.

Trust me.

Now go practice, then binge my music.