No time to practice?

Can’t fit practice time in to your schedule?

I have been reading an awesome book called Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear that has been an eye opener to me.

Four Minute Books sums it up best:

Atomic Habits is the definitive guide to break bad behaviors and adopt good ones in four steps, showing you how small, incremental, everyday routines compound and add up to massive, positive change over time.“

Four Minute has a great summary that you should read. One of the things they say is this:

“…3 lessons to help you use everything he’s learned to break bad habits and form good ones:

1. Every time we perform a habit, we execute a four-step pattern: cue, craving, response, reward.
2. If we want to form new habits, we should make them obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.
3. You can use a habit tracker as a fun way to measure your progress and make sure you don’t fall off the wagon.”

I want to address #2: making a new habit obvious, easy, and satisfying.

How we set up our environment has a tremendous effect on the habits we make.

For example: what if I wanted to make a routine of eating an apple a day to make more healthy choices in snacking. I wouldn’t store them all the way back in the fridge. We wouldn’t see them all the time and most likely those apples would go bad. (Out of sight, out of mind. I have experience here…). The habit is never created.

However, what if instead, I set the apples in a bowl on the table in my kitchen. I would see them all the time and have a much better chance at achieving my goal of eating an apple a day. Why? Because it’s obvious(right there out in the open), easy (I simply have to reach down and pick up the apple which is in plain sight), and satisfying (it tastes good and I feel like I made a more healthy choice of a snack).

Now translate to guitar.

Where is your guitar right now?

If it is stored away in the closet, under the bed, in the corner of a room you don’t go in all the time, your chances are far less that you will pick it up to play and/or practice.

However, if you left it out in the open where you see it all the time: say on a stand in the living room or in a case right in front of the tv. Your chances of picking it up are much greater.

This is especially true if you have very limited time: If it is in the open, you can easily pick it up for just 5 minutes and jam or practice.

So make it obvious, easy, and ultimately satisfying with regards to where your guitar is so that you can grab it and do something on it like practice or even do a simple exercise.

Do your fingers need a workout? Here is a free mini course I made for you to help out with that. It’s obvious (just a click away), easy (just follow along the course with short videos), and satisfying (you WILL play better). Check it out here:

Just click this link: Guitar Finger Gymnastics