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10 minutes a day? How does that work
Ok, I kind of breezed through the 30 days to play. It was mostly review for me although there was several I spent some time on. I’m working through the 5 Day challenge and just got to Wednesday. I can see those are going to be big.
My question revolves around this whole 10 minutes a day thing. Now, I practice a lot more than 10 minutes a day, but I have quite a bit of stuff I was already working on. When I was waffling over whether to sign up for this, I thought, “I can squeeze in another 10 minutes,” and made that commitment.
Now, Day 1 and 2, yeah, I can do 10 minutes. It won’t be perfect, but as Tony says, that’s not the point. I’m looking at an example of what day 3 looks like. If I only went through each video once with no practicing, I’m looking at 16 minutes. I could easily spend 30 minutes practicing the riff, then add in several repeats of the scale and backing track videos.
I know I can favorite and come back to it later, but I have a feeling that stuff I want to come back later to is going to grow to an unmanageable level. I’m sure this isn’t the first time you guys are hearing this, but would love as much experience and perspective as you can share.
Thanks. (Does the forum count against my 10 minutes? 😎)
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4 Replies
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I love your enthusiasm and dedication to your guitar journey. My wife is an “Enneagram 1”. She likes rules and clarity as to what “counts”. So the good thing about TAC is you define what “counts”. I personally define 10 minutes as practice not including the video. I have over 1600 playing sessions as of now. Some (many) have been just 10 minutes but often they are [much] longer. After 10 minutes I ignore the clock and play as my time or emotions allow. Usually the time beyond 10 minutes is working a song or technique related to my quarterly goals. This time of year it is related to starting to reviewing a Holiday playlist to play for the family and friends.
This a long reply but the short answer is define what works works for you and have fun.
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Thank you, that makes sense and will likely be my approach as well. I waffle between being highly structured and being less so. But always with a focus on whatever I am working on at the moment.
I am also confident that there will be weeks I will want to get by with the minimum and others I will return to.
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@dbvirago 10 minutes is really quite simple. Commit to the minimum of 10 per day, and you’ll be better than you were the day before, and there is a science behind the 10 minutes per day. You’d have to ask someone that can remember what it was exactly. Tony reads a lot and is very positive and he puts into action a lot of things he strongly believes will help others.
The key is to focus on a lesson and playing the guitar for that 10 minutes. When taking lessons, once you have the 10 minutes in, just mark the lesson complete. You can walk away at that point and pat your self on the back for doing what you committed to do. As you said, you often practice more than 10 minutes per day, which is quite all right. Don’t spend too long in one sitting at any one thing. It can actually backfire and be counterproductive. I like to split up playing sessions into multiple 10-15 minute sessions throughout the day. Know when it’s time to walk away and come back another time. It’s about progress, not perfection.
There were many times I could only commit 10 minutes per day, especially when my mother was alive and I was her full time caregiver. It was usually a quick destressor at 10 p.m. or later after she was down for the night.
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Thanks for the feedback, Loraine. I always break my practice into 5-20 minute chunks with 5-20 minute breaks in between. It’s better for me physically, I can focus better, and there’s that science behind that says retention will be better.
I was mostly just on about Tony’s commit to 10 minute mantra, when the daily videos alone are 15-20 minutes even without practicing the Daily Challenge.
At any rate, one daily challenge down and looking forward to tomorrow. When he played “what we will learn by the end of the week,” I was skeptical, but today came pretty easy, so I can’t wait to get the first week under my fingers.
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