Itās very interesting to hear the different things that cause frustration in us
I have many small frustrations - some of the same ones as are already mentioned by others here.
But the big one, maybe the perpetual one, is the voice in my head that tells me that no matter how much I practise and how many small improvements I make, Iāll never be āgoodā or even āgood enoughā.
Good enough for what?
In practice of an activity that essentially has no end point, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
I am good enough to keep learning!
Honestly there is nothing about learning the guitar that I find frustrating. Of course there are things I canāt do but to me I just enjoy playing/ practicing and itās 100% about having fun and enjoying the journey. When I encounter something that might frustrate me I usually just park it until my skills are at a point where I can master it without the frustration.
Without a doubt, it has to be power chords.
I simply do not want to learn them but know in my heart I really should. Knowing this I just stopped at that point. Power chords to me feels like cheating. Which is why I do not want to learn them. This also stopped me from completing grade 2 by end of year.
R
Good enough to feel comfortable answering āYes!ā when someone asks me if I can play the guitar, instead of āA bitā¦ā or āYeah, but Iām still kinda bad at itā.
Itās not about the end point, but about feeling competent, I guess. Like when Iām driving a car. Iām not a professional race car driver, but I donāt usually bump into random objects or drive off the road, either. I can parallel park.
Or, actually, a better comparison: singing. Iām not a professional level singer, but I know Iām somewhat competent. I could get on a stage and sing, and feel comfortable about my performance. But I also know that I still have a lot to learn and could improve in endless ways.
Hence the frustration.
Interesting thought. I donāt play songs with power chords too often, but it never occurred to me that it would be cheating to use those chords. They just have a different sound than major or minor chords. Sus chords could just as well be considered cheating since they donāt have the 3rd scale degree, either.
There has been a bit of this 
for me latelyā¦ 
The first frustration that comes to mind for me at the moment is that Blues curl! I just canāt seem to get it sounding right/good 
And also the not enough practice time, but also, Iām very grateful that I have a job, a house to live in (that needs maintenance) and other things like this forum that I spend time on when not practicing 
. And to be honest, Iād get more practice in if it wasnāt for my distractable monkey mind that seems to be running wild at the momentā¦ 
and this 
Butā¦ all in all, love guitar, frustrations and all. Canāt see myself ever giving it up 
That, I understand. But it does bring up the conflict between what we want and expect and the reality of learning guitar. It takes time, years of time. It isnāt easy, at all.
Your profile mentions ātrying to learn āfor realā since early 2024ā. Anything you feel competent at, you probably have been doing a lot longer and guitar is one of the more difficult tasks.
You will get there, it will just be longer than your imagination would like.
Having been on this forum for several years now, I have been encouraged and thrilled to see how the members are advancing. I try not to compare myself to anyone, I move at my own glacial pace, but there are quite a few here who are making progress, becoming more competent and having a ton of fun and joy in the process. It just needs persistence and some effort.
Maybe it is somewhat frustrating to see people able to play better than I can in shorter times, but I am not them and I try hard to believe in myself and be ok with my progress. It will be one of those things were I look back after a decade and realize I actually can kind of play guitar, right?
playing a piece perfectly with a metronome in practice and as soon as the recording light turns on, everything is forgotten and the hands stop moving
This is almost exactly what I was typing when Saifās post came in! There are other frustrating aspects to guitar for sure, but not being able to play - at all - when the camera comes on or when someone walks into the roomā¦
AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!
This is what Iām working on daily & have seen some improvementā¦ but not there yet.
Tod
For me, itās plateaus in learning songs and in skills development ā well, learning anything really. A recent example: Iād been working on Greensleeves, and by the end of October had it fairly well committed to memory. Someone asked me to play it during a Christmas performance mid-December. āPiece of cake!ā I thought, having six weeks to work on making it good enough. Despite all my clever practice techniques, I pretty quickly reached a certain level and got stuck. I couldnāt reliably play it smoothly in practice, and opted not to perform it. I find these plateaus occur with most songs and skills I work on, and theyāre frustrating as heck! 
It always sounds a bit corny when people say it but this is the point where learning to enjoy the journey is important because otherwise you are 100% right.
(I realise this is you answering @jacobbonde but Iāll continue anyway)
In my opinion, the first months of playing guitar arenāt that much fun. Thereās the initial novelty and then it starts to dawn how long itās going to take. Practicing chord changes day after day and struggling to produce anything sounding vaguely musical is hard for sure.
And I think this is why Justin emphasises learning songs because thatās the fun bit. All my practice sessions now involve some time trying to improve something new and some time playing something Iāve already learned. This way I get some enjoyment every day from my guitar. If you focus only on the destination then thatās the hard wayā¦ and the chances are youāll immediately decide thereās another destination thatās also a distance away. We have to enjoy the journey
I need to take some more time to read all your repliesā¦
ā¦
ā¦but I just wanted to point out that in a few days this Frustration thread got more replies than the Achievements one in a few weeksā¦no no nooooā¦this is no good! 
Please think about your achievements before 2025 comes and stay motivated 
(ā¦no need to share them if you donāt want to).
This is a great one.
For the most part, Iām a firm believer in āKeep at it, and youāll get better,ā but it really is an asymptotic curve that has decreasingly small improvement from one day to the next. Then, one day, Iāll suddenly do better than ever, and then that becomes the new baseline (except for the ābadā days).
I wonder if this is a cue for dropping it for a while, working on other things, then coming back to it later. I do sometimes find that I do better with that break. (Other times I find that I become worse at it.)
This is the way I (try to) deal with the plateau. And while Iāve come to accept the frustration, I think an additional feeling is disappointment in my inability to reach my goal!
Perhaps frustrations arenāt so bad, as long as we donāt let them get the better of us. For some of us, Iām sure itās part of what drives us to keep practising and working on getting better. I think frustration is a valid feeling when striving to improve and trying to reach our goals, especially if they are a bit ambitious.
I think the advice to āenjoy the journeyā is in general good, and certainly well intended. And an enjoyable journey takes us through interesting places and hopefully allows us to reach many wonderful destinations along the way. And sometimes we have to walk through a bit of rain and mud to reach the next warm inn - and itās ok to feel a bit grumpy about that.
If we only ever care about just keeping on walking and never about where we would like it to take us, we could be missing out. Goals and ambitions are important and motivational for learning. Perhaps we are setting ourselves up for failure when we set a goal that might be out of reach - but we might also learn more than we ever expected, just trying to get there. And how much sweeter the feeling of achievement, when we have struggled through our frustrations to make it there.
Itās step one to identify some things to work on, how to find alternatives, how to broaden the basics that fit below the source of frustration etc.
This is a splendid time to re-assess the goals we once set and re-evaluate for the upcoming year.
Iāve been thinking on this one for awhile. Probably the most frustrating thing for me is how long it takes to develop the finger dexterity, control, and flexibility to do the things that my mind wants me to be able to do.
Iām managing this better within the past year, but this is the thing that stymied my previous attempts to learn guitar.
Iāve had a difficult time deciding how to answer this one. Frustration, after all, is not only to be expected but beneficial to our learning as Justin described here:
The disappointment that it takes more time and effort to master new things is just part of being a human trying to learn something complex. I enjoy those challenges and marvel at seeing the infinitesimal improvements add up with time.
What I consider truly frustrating has been the physical discomfort that resulted from the most extreme stretches at the bottom of the neck, the F barre chord being the very worst. I could play it, but while seated it always required a very awkward and uncomfortable twist of my body, and even then my wrist would be bent in a way that clearly was not what it should be. Pretty quickly, my wrist was hurting throughout the day even when I wasnāt playing. This problem was nearly eliminated while standing, so Iād eventually just stand while playing anything involving the F chord.
But, in general, I never felt physically comfortable with the guitar while sitting. It felt like everything was shifted too far to my right and the neck was too low. The classical position was in many ways ideal - except for what it required of my legs, which brought about a different discomfort that I couldnāt tolerate.
I can easily say that troubleshooting these ergonomic challenges has been my greatest frustration for the past year. āI just want to play guitar!ā And I donāt think this frustration enhanced my learning, except thatā¦
It led me to pursue a wide variety of approaches to improving the ergonomics of guitar-playing. Iād really hoped to find a solution with my original guitar, but it just wasnāt happening. Eventually I committed to getting a Strandberg guitar, and it arrived at the beginning of December.
Iām not prone to hyperbole, but this guitar really has been life-changing. Since getting it, Iāve been practicing/playing 2 to 3 hours every day, including the F barre (still difficult!), but I have no wrist pain, even while playing. And I can sit straighter and more comfortably in ways that were impossible with other guitars.
While I consider this a huge victory, it has a downside, too. My special needs apparently preclude me from playing the majority of guitars that exist. I guess the other benefit is that I wonāt become a guitar collector.
This used to happen to me a lot. At the moment in the very first phases of learning a new piece I try to contrast mussel memory to establish too early and I try to find the notes with my ear without bothering too much about timing (which I add later on). Iām a bit obssesed with this and I know that at a certain point I will have to learn to trust my mussel memory more since I play the Classical Guitar and let things happen, but at the same time I feel itās more crucial for me now to learn to be there while they happenā¦and that requires much work to be able to stay focussed. That said I play only short pieces, I canāt be foccused for more than maybe 2 minutes ( but it used to be way less, so I donāt live it as a frustration but something I can improve).