⏳ Practicing when life gets in the way
For most of us the guitar has to fit around everything else, work, family, travel, tiredness, the weeks where twenty unbroken minutes feels like a win. Some keep a streak going no matter what, some accept the fallow stretches and trust the playing will come back, some are quietly frustrated that progress stalls the moment life gets busy. How we handle the lean weeks probably matters more over a lifetime of playing than how we handle the good ones.
💬 How do you keep playing when time is short?
- What actually keeps the guitar in your week when everything is competing for your time?
- When you can only grab a few minutes, what do you spend them on, and what do you let go?
- Have you made peace with the slow stretches, or do they still nag at you?
Almost nobody gets the practice time they wish they had, and the players who last are often the ones who made their peace with that. Let's compare how we keep going.
4 replies
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Hi! For me, that’s when technique routines become really important. I had five concerts this week, but still, playing does not count as practice time. I’d like to hear and learn more strategies here.
Also, my best practice time is usually when I’m in a hurry and I need to get something done.
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I guess I am the opposite of Guilherme above. First of all, with five concerts in a week, I assume he is a very accomplished professional. I am just an intermediate amateur with no concerts ever.
I rarely get more than 20 minutes in a row to play. I refuse to use that time to play boring scales, arpeggios, and exercises. I play for joy and none of that brings me any joy. Instead, I just dive right into whatever piece of music I am working on. I know that may limit my progress, but I’m fine with that.
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This topic will highlight the contrast between those of us for whom the guitar is our vocation and those of us who practice it as an avocation. I’m in the former group and like most who have a few decades under our belts doing this, I have a 20 – 30 minute routine that concentrates on technique. That keeps my hands in shape during those stretches when life is pulling me in twenty directions at once. And it serves as a good warm-up when I have more time to spend.
Most of my students fall into the second category and one of the things I help them find is there own routine. Some students find slow scale and arpeggio practice to be meditative and relaxing – some find it maddening; for them I try to steer them toward etudes that are musically pleasing but actually work on technical skills they need to improve.
Many students, probably most students, have the notion that if they don’t have 20 or 30 minutes or more to practice then it’s not worth it. I try to make them understand that practice is cumulative – 5 minutes with coffee in the morning, and 10 minutes after dinner may not be ideal but it beats the heck out of not playing at all that day.
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I always tried to set some time apart for playing the guitar. Sometimes technical stuff like scales, sometimes small pieces. Even when I was very short in time I could squeeze in half an hour a day. Off course there were small (and one or two big ones) exceptions when I could not play at all, but generally it worked out fine.