u/Jesterhead89

So just recently, I think I realized a big mistake I was making with my practice (among many other big mistakes lol). I'm a 5 year intermediate player, and generally used my medium and difficult song(s) as gauges to see where I need to focus on. Then I would find songs or bands that generally used those techniques a lot and would practice technique through song learning. Obviously, this is probably still short changing me without having specific exercises and all that. I'm considering getting an instructor soon to try out.

But I think one big mistake I've been doing for the last year or so is my difficult song was.....just too difficult. It was too far outside the range of my abilities that progress was minimal to none, and only gave me frustration and self-doubt. So I decided to drop that and just treat it as a "hopefully one day" song.

But that made me start thinking, how do others not only identify their weak areas but how do you prioritize and lay out practice routines to make progress in those areas?

Some examples of my actual weak areas: hand tension (mostly in my fretting hand), picking/fretting efficiency, string skipping. I play mostly metal as my first love, but I'm not confined to only playing metal.

Do they promise and then eventually deliver a wire transfer of 20 billion dollars? Do they join that company's projects directly and spend from their own wallet? Do they say "take $20 billion worth of stuff, on the house"?

Admittedly I'm not too familiar with this time period outside of the main points taught in school (I'm in the US). I know that people at that time knew the planet was not only round but roughly knew the circumference as well.

So with my limited understanding, did the Europeans see a westward crossing across the Atlantic as being difficult because tacking into the wind for the distance they were expecting was just unfeasible, supply-wise? And if that's the case, were there ever any plans to travel to the East Indies by rounding Africa and India, but then loading up and continuing back to Europe with the wind to the east? Or perhaps this route was also too long even with favorable wind?