I only have one solid hour to practice, but half the battle is getting set up and focus. What routines or how to practice?
For people who only have around an hour to practice, how do you make the most of it?
I’ve noticed one of my biggest problems isn’t always the actual playing. It’s the setup before practicing and staying focused.
Sometimes I’m switching between YouTube, sheet music/tabs, a tuner, a metronome, notes, a timer/stopwatch, and trying to find the exact section I was working on last time. By the time I get everything ready, I already feel a little distracted or tired.
What’s helped me most is keeping practice simple and reducing decisions before I start. I usually write down what I want to work on at the beginning of the week, otherwise I forget or spend too much time deciding.
My usual practice flow is something like:
- Tune first, sometime I need to tune multiple times throughout a sessions because I end up learning other songs and they are in different tuning, and then I can't find my physical tuner or I need to search online for a tuner again, so I end up not tuning lol
- Pick one song or one small section/phrase
- Use a metronome or slow the part down
- Loop/repeat the hard section, putting the video at like 0.25 speed
- Set a timer so I don’t wander around randomly. There's pomodoro technique and time blocks
- Use stopwatch laps sometimes to see how long something actually takes me to learn, or when I start losing focus
- Write down what I worked on so I can continue next time
I ended up building a Chrome side panel for myself because I wanted my practice tools in one place while using YouTube/video lessons, tabs, sheet music, or whatever I’m learning from. It has things like a metronome, tuner, timer, stopwatch, notes/library, and video practice controls. So I can stay playing and in the flow zone
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tempo-kit/nhakclpaaelpoioipaegldlcidmdfkgf
I’m still curious how people actually practice more efficiently.
When you only have limited time to practice, what helps you get into focused practice faster? And what usually wastes the most time for you?
