304 - What Should You Practise Right Now?

When you sit down with your guitar, having too many options can make practice harder, not easier.

In this episode, Paul Andrews shares a simple way to choose what deserves your attention right now, so your practice sessions become more focused and productive.

In this episode

• Why more lessons, exercises, and guitar information can create confusion
• How to start with your current goal
• How to identify the bottleneck holding back your playing
• Why smaller practice actions lead to clearer progress
• How to isolate difficult chord changes, rhythm patterns, transitions, and tempo increases
• The three parts of a useful practice session: progress, maintain, and play
• Why balance should be considered across weeks and months, not forced into every session
• How long to keep working on the same priority
• How to avoid constantly switching to new riffs, songs, and exercises
• What to do when you don’t yet have a clear guitar goal

The three questions

Use these questions to decide what to practice:

1. What am I trying to achieve?
2. What is stopping me from doing it?
3. What is the smallest action that would improve it?

Instead of choosing a broad goal such as “get better at guitar,” identify a specific action, such as changing from G to C four times without pausing.

Build your practice session

A balanced session can include:

• Progress: Work on your current bottleneck with your greatest concentration.
• Maintain: Revisit skills and material you already know so you don’t lose them.
• Play: Make music by playing a song, revisiting a riff, or improvising over a backing track.

For a 20-minute session, you might spend 10 minutes on progress, 5 minutes on maintenance, and 5 minutes playing. The exact timings can change, but each section should have a clear purpose.

This week’s challenge

Choose one practice priority and write down your answers to the three questions. Give that small action focused attention during each practice session this week.

Your priority could be:

• Changing between two chords smoothly
• Playing a rhythm consistently with a metronome
• Learning four bars of a song
• Working through a difficult exercise
• Playing a song from beginning to end without stopping

Keep it specific enough that you know exactly what to do when you pick up the guitar.

Beginner Guitar Academy

Beginner Guitar Academy provides a five-level curriculum covering seven essential guitar skills: picking, chords, arpeggios, scales, rhythm, notes, and ear training.

Members also receive focused exercises, songs, progress checks, assessments, unlimited teacher support from Paul Andrews, and access to the Practice Studio.

Join for a $1 two-week trial at beginnerguitaracademy.com.