It’s been a while since I posted here other than uploading my songs. It’s time to give something back so I thought I’d share my 2026 learning method:
Messy practice is better than aiming for perfection. Conditions that induce more errors enhance long term retention.
Adult learners need micro commitment and daily wins. A simple daily routine is what keeps you moving forward in your guitar journey. Don’t get tunnel vision.
Don’t collect songs like trophies. Lord knows I’ve done this in the past! Collect abilities and fundamentals and use those to revisit the songs you already tried and ones that maybe were not so great the first try.
Too many choices overwhelm us. Follow daily challenges from a handful of choices.
Make sure your guitar is physically comfortable. This means do a setup, use light strings, etc. comfort is a learning requirement, not a luxury.
Obsession over theory too early can derail your guitar journey. Learn the song first then go back and analyze how the theory fits into it.
Recognize patterns and connect to things you already know. Your brain is built for connecting dots and seeing patterns. After learning the notes on the 5th and 6th string I could jump in anywhere and find a note along the whole guitar neck not just a few frets like when I started. Also seeing how G-C-D-Em always seems to go together. Etc.
Learning new things is like planting a seed. Sometimes it’s like the root growing beneath the surface. Progress is not linear and setbacks should be thought of as setup periods. Plateaus are part of the journey.
Musical talent is often a myth. It is usually early exposure combined with regular practice. Musical ability is developed not discovered. Progress not perfection as you develop your talent.
Make if- then plans or plan for the worst case scenarios.your guitar playing needs a contingency plan for times of “bad weather”. Keep the guitar out on a stand and practice 5 minutes if needed when life throws a curve. Hope for the best and plan for the worst.
Don’t make practice decisions daily. Plan for the week on Sunday morning. Don’t spend hours each day searching for what you want to practice. Plan the weeks practice assigning yourself something specific each day. Failing to do this will give you decision fatigue and send you in circles accomplishing nothing.
Don’t try to compare yourself to what a seasoned professional is doing. You shouldn’t expect to play like Eddie Van Halen. Instead connect with others in the community here that are at a similar level. Community multiplies motivation, but choose your crowd wisely.
Be kind to yourself. Say to yourself what you would say to a close friend. Self criticism triggers your brains threat response. Treat yourself with patience, kindness, and celebrate the small wins. Replace “I’m awful” with”I’m learning “. Tell yourself this is exactly where I need to be in my journey.
Have I mastered all of this yet? Hell no but it’s the guideline I’m starting with. Failures will come but so will success . Thanks for reading.
Lots of good advice here. I’ll just re-emphasize that striving for perfection is probably the worst thing I have done. Even playing a basic scale perfectly (perfect timing, perfect pressure on each note, perfect release of each note, perfect muting) can take a decade. Don’t let the drive for perfection slow down your learning. Get it “good enough”, move on, and then circle back later.
Great advice, thank you for sharing! I have recently learned lesson #3 in practice – I attempted some songs that I put down months ago and found them so much easier to play after learning other skills. Sometimes the skill learning is more useful than repeating the song over and over.
Thanks for adding your thoughts. I don’t think anyone will ever find perfection, even after a decade. I’ve seen professionals mess up on stage. What I learned is to play through the mistake especially on stage in front of a crowd. Happy strumming
This one resonates with me. Theory is great if you are curious about the why of something that sounds good to you, and at some point it serves as a scaffold that gets you straight to new places that would be difficult to find by experiment alone.
But the way I often see it being dissected in this forum gives me pause. It is such an unwieldy, arcane and jargon-laden body of knowledge that it is no surprise that many struggle with it. I worry that some begin to feel that without understanding it all they will never be a musician. This is a fallacy. And when all said and done, it is possible to chuck the lot out of the window and play something great that breaks all the rules.
Me? I like theory! It definitely works as a scaffold in my case, and always did, right from my first few weeks of playing. I realise however that not everyone works the same way.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I study theory, but only at a rudimentary level to help me understand what I am playing and how it fits together. I just don’t want to get into a rabbit hole of expectations of perfection. It’s like studying grammar before deciding to speak. I’ve seen the same here so many want to overthink theory to the point of confusion.
There’s a social media account on various platforms named Growth By Visuals (FB version / online store). Loads of his images are directly applicable to your guitar learning journey. Good stuff.
Also, related especially to #13, I listened to a Berklee Guitar Department podcast long ago where their guest was a student. I was particularly caught by her discussion of the school emphasizing using “familiar / unfamiliar” terminology rather than “easy / difficult”. I rather like the framing because it encourages thinking about challenges in a positive but subtle, non-“cheerleader-y” way.
I really Like this. 11, 12, and 13 are critical. Each for their own different reasons. 11 especially for any ADHD people, having that set scedual is essential. 13 is really hard for me. I have battled with it my whole life, still stuggling with it. We will leave it at that.
Awsome Jeff. I am super stoked for you, ur living the dream . Keep up the good work.
On point 13 it’s normal to have negative thoughts. About 70% of thoughts are negative in nature. There is an evolutionary reason for this, it prevents us from doing anything extremely reckless. The problem is that it is a misguided thought process when we try to learn new things.
My general approach is just to acknowledge negative thoughts. You can’t fight how you feel. Of course that doesn’t mean you should wallow in negativity. Be kind to yourself means it’s ok to feel bad. Let the bad feelings pass through then move on to the task at hand.
I really like that mentality. Unfamiliar sounds like a better option to change to making a technique familiar, as opposed to saying it’s too hard for me.
I’m glad you found something useful out of my 13 point rant. It’s very easy to say I suck, and hard to overcome that. Tell yourself it’s new to you and you’ll get there. Focus on what you have achieved and build on that. For me I still can’t play scales or solo in any meaningful way after years of trying. That said, neither did Jimmy Hendricks. Look how great his rhythm guitar was. The hardest part for me to schedule practice time is to have any available time at all. I work 3 jobs all hours of the day and night, so any guitar time is s blessing. At least I squeeze out a song here and there and develop what I already know. Take the small wins for now . Thanks for your comments.
Hi Jeff, well done on writing down this list of good reminders. I can relate with most things you mentioned.
There are a few things that I think are strictly related to the individual stage of learning though, like for example this one
Beginners should definetely follow a practice schedule but as I’m progressing I find myself able to “read” today’s practice and decide: “I need to do more of this exactly the same way tomorrow” or “tomorrow I should try to introduce the metronome” or “let’s see if today I can apply the strumming pattern while going along the original recording on muted strings” or “yesterday went reasonably well, I feel confident today for this or that”. I make decisions daily at this stage of my journey, but they’re strictly based on my feeling confident enough and on the well-being of the previous practice session. Does it make any sense to you?
I agree that planning ahead is crucial, it’s just getting more flexible for me as the goal remains clear for the month.
I also find it useful to re-frame “I’m struggling” with “I’m building” because learning to play the guitar can be demanding, it’s easy to feel the struggle and being tired and “not able to”…when actually building a new skill requires that “not being able too”!
Number 13 is a point I’ve made in various threads on this forum having learned it much later in life than would have been ideal! Playing guitar should be fun and there’s nothing fun about hearing about how much you suck even if it’s your own internal voice that’s saying it.
Progress with guitar isn’t a never ending upwards straight path - there’s plateaus and even days when it seems to be going backwards - this is part of being human! Maybe on the bad days you choose to practice something different to what you planned if you get stuck with frustration, but don’t let frustration win!
I’d also say don’t be afraid to put a song down. If you’ve been trying for weeks and it’s not getting better then move on… it probably means you’re not ready for that song yet. If you keep plugging away for 6 months then by the end you’ll probably hate the song anyway! Don’t let your ego make your decisions
My apologies for the delay in responding. You have some great points to add. Like don’t be afraid to shelve a song for later. Just about all the songs I’ve done so far this year were ones I failed at in the past. So far people are liking the improvement on 2026. Progress not perfection. I try to swipe left on those negative self thoughts like I’m deleting junk email. The best part of learning guitar is to enjoy the journey. Happy strumming.
. Keep up the good work.