How to Build a Guitar Practice Plan You'll Actually Use

If you've followed along with the last few articles, you may have created a new problem for yourself.

You know what kind of guitarist you're trying to become. You've picked music that actually means something to you. You've started breaking those tunes down, and you've identified techniques, skills and trouble spots that need work.

Now you've got a giant list of things you could practice.

That's progress, but it doesn't necessarily tell you what to do when you finally get 30 minutes with your guitar tonight.

A practice plan isn't a list of everything you want to learn. It's a decision about what deserves your attention right now.

Your practice time is limited. The possibilities aren't. Let's figure out what makes the cut.

Start With Music That's Worth the Effort

Learning a complete tune can be a significant investment. I'm currently learning Technical Difficulties by Paul Gilbert. I'll be spending a few months on that one, if not longer!

You're going to listen to it closely. You may map out the structure, learn several different sections, solve technical problems, memorize parts and put everything back together. If you want to keep the tune in your repertoire, you'll probably need to revisit it later too.

That's a lot of effort to spend on music you don't really care about.

This became much more obvious to me recently while breaking down a tune that has meant something to me for years (Silent Lucidity). I enjoyed sitting with it, listening closely and figuring out how all the pieces fit together. The work itself was rewarding because I actually cared about the music.

Choose tunes that mean enough to you to justify the time you're about to invest in them.

That doesn't mean every tune needs to have some profound emotional story attached to it. You might love the riff. You might want the technical challenge. You might want to perform it. Maybe it's simply fun.

Those are all good reasons. Just have a reason.

Gather Your Practice Candidates

Start by getting the possibilities out of your head and into one place.

If you've been working through the process from the previous articles, your list might include complete tunes, individual sections, technical problems and broader musical skills.

For example:

• Learn a complete acoustic tune
• Finish the solo from another tune
• Improve alternate picking
• Work on picking-hand and fretting-hand synchronization
• Improve bends and vibrato
• Develop thumb independence
• Learn some chord inversions
• Improve rhythm and groove
• Memorize a tune you've already learned
• Practice performing without stopping

Don't worry about organizing everything perfectly yet. You're just collecting possibilities.

And here's the important distinction: a practice candidate is not a commitment.

You can always put it in a "queue" to learn at a later date. In fact, I recommend this.

Discovering something that could improve your playing doesn't automatically mean it deserves your practice time today.

Ask One Question: Why Now?

Once you've collected your candidates, start asking a much more useful question:

Why does this deserve my limited practice time right now?

There are plenty of good answers.

• It unlocks a tune that matters to me.
• It's preventing progress in several tunes.
• It's a major weakness in my playing.
• I need it for an upcoming performance.
• It's a skill that keeps showing up in the style of music I'm trying to play.
• I'm close to finishing it and could score a quick win.
• It strongly supports the kind of guitarist I'm trying to become.
• I'm genuinely excited about working on it right now.

That last one counts.

A practice plan doesn't have to be a mathematically perfect optimization of your weaknesses. You're making music. Wanting to work on something is a perfectly legitimate reason to give it some attention.

But asking why now? forces you to distinguish between something that's interesting and something that actually deserves a place in your current practice.

Look for Things That Solve More Than One Problem

Some practice candidates have more leverage than others.

Suppose three different tunes are exposing the same problem with your alternate picking. Improving that one skill might help you make progress on all three.

The same thing can happen with rhythm, synchronization, bending, fingerstyle, memorization, fretboard knowledge or almost any other skill.

Ask yourself:

If I improve this one thing, how many musical problems does it solve?

That doesn't mean the highest-leverage skill always wins. Sometimes learning a simple tune that means something to you is exactly what you need.

But when several pieces of music keep pointing toward the same weakness, pay attention. Your music may be telling you something.

Mix Challenges With Quick Wins

Be careful about filling your entire practice plan with giant projects.

If everything you're working on is going to take six months, it can be hard to ever feel like you're finishing anything.

There's nothing wrong with having a difficult tune or technique that will take a long time to develop. Those projects can be incredibly rewarding.

Just don't make every project a musical Mount Everest.

Mix longer challenges with things you can realistically finish or improve in the near future. Learn the difficult instrumental, but maybe keep an approachable acoustic tune in the mix too. Work on the technique that could take months, but also fix the four-measure passage that might click this week.

Quick wins create momentum. Longer projects give you somewhere to grow.

Choose a Manageable Current Focus

Eventually you have to make the cut.

There's no magic number of things every guitarist should have in a practice plan. Someone practicing two hours a day has a different capacity than someone trying to find 20 minutes between work, family and everything else going on in life.

The important thing is that your list of current priorities is small enough that the word priority still means something.

If you have 27 current priorities, you don't have priorities.

Everything else doesn't need to disappear. Put it somewhere safe and come back to it later.

I like thinking about practice material in a few simple states:

• In Queue: I want to work on this, but not right now.
• Active: This is receiving my attention now.
• Maintenance: I've learned this and want to keep it playable.

Something can move between those states whenever your priorities change. Moving something back into the queue isn't failure. It just means something else matters more right now.

Not now doesn't mean never.

Know What Progress Looks Like

Before you sit down to practice something, it helps to know what you're actually trying to improve.

This doesn't need to become a complicated goal-setting exercise.

Instead of:

Practice alternate picking.

you might decide:

Play this passage cleanly at 120 BPM.

Instead of:

Practice this tune.

you might decide:

Play the main acoustic part cleanly through the first verse.

You don't need a spreadsheet full of goals. You just need enough clarity to answer:

What would make me say today's practice actually worked?

Your Practice Plan Is Allowed to Change

The plan you make today probably shouldn't be the plan you're still blindly following six months from now.

You'll finish tunes. Techniques will improve. Something you thought would be difficult may turn out to be easy. Something else may expose a much larger weakness than you expected.

Your interests will change too. A performance might come up. You may hear a tune tomorrow that you absolutely have to learn.

A practice plan is a living system, not a syllabus you've failed when you deviate from it.

Practice for a while, see what happens, and adjust.

Choose → Practice → Evaluate → Adjust

That's the cycle.

Put It All Together

Over these first few articles, we've worked our way through a simple process.

Identity → Music → Break It Down → Find the Problems → Prioritize → Practice

Start with the kind of guitarist you want to become. Choose music that means something to you. Break that music into manageable pieces. Let it expose the techniques and skills you need. Then decide which of those things deserve your attention now.

You don't need to practice everything.

You need to make good decisions about what you're practicing now.

Ready to Put Your Plan on Paper?

Knowing how to choose your priorities is one thing. Actually sitting down, sorting through your tunes and turning those decisions into a plan is another.

That's why I created the One-Month Guitar Repertoire Builder.

It's a free printable planning guide built around the same process we've been working through in this series. You'll choose five tunes, break them down, identify what they require and map out what you're going to work on over the next month.