Time to Create Your Own Ritual

The best way to get started is to create one and try it out.Keep it simple and try not to over analyze this. Start with something that will take you between 15 to 25 minutes a day. Include a a few different areas of your development such as finger development, chord changes, fingerpicking, etc.

Here’s a simple process I recommend to create your very first ritual:

Warmup

Choose one exercise. I suggest for starters you use a speed developer exercise (see Supersonic Guitar Exercises). If you are a beginner use the first one (remember don’t over think this).

Approximate time: 4 minutes.

Daily Development

Choose 2 exercises from the 5-Minute Practice library. The only criteria is that they should not be too much of a challenge to complete.

Approximate time: 10 minutes.

Final Closing

Now choose something you’d enjoy playing. If you are just beginning you may not have a lot to choose from. Use an exercise or song that you’ve learned a little while ago and you feel fairly confident with. This will at least give you ending your session on a positive note.

If you been playing even a little while you surely have something that you enjoy that you could use at this point. It could be a song or part of a song. It could be just an exercise that you like. Perhaps even improvising with the backing track. As long as it’s something that you enjoy.

Approximate time: 4 minutes.

This will give you a ritual that is approximately 18 minutes long… Give or take. It’s just a starting place and you’ll be making adjustments as you go.

Here’s Some Getting Started Tips

1. Rather than trying to construct the perfect guitar ritual just create something you feel fairly comfortable with. Try it out and make adjustments as you go.
2. Put your focus on creating a habit with consistency and repetition. Create something you can do daily.
3. Put less energy into getting the exercises perfect or working hard. Use another practice session for working on things that you are just learning.
4. It will help if you can do this at the same time each day. This is definitely not mandatory but it will create a habit faster.
5. Think ahead about how you’re going to fit this into your day. Early in the morning. It could be at the end of the day if you’re still alert. I found just before dinner works for me.
6. Try not to be overly ambitious with the amount of time in the beginning. Once you’ve created a habit it will be easier to add on.
7. Create a space for practicing and have everything handy so you’re not fumbling when it comes time to practice. Make it easy to just go sit down and get started. Here’s a complete lesson on How to Set Up Your Guitar Practice Space.
8. Get the support of family members. Let them know how important this is to you even though it’s only 18 minutes a day.