Guitar practice isn’t always as exciting as we’d like it to be. Sometimes, it can even be downright boring. Why sit down with your lame old guitar when you could be hanging with friends or watching your favorite shows? If you’re like me, you can find yourself drawn to other things when you should be practicing.

Never fear! There’s actually a lot you can do to make guitar practice more appealing. If you follow the advice in this post, you should be well on your way to having more fun playing guitar.

No matter how intelligent or structured your practice routine, you should always be willing to embrace change. In fact, the best routines are somewhat flexible and versatile.

The first and hardest step you need to take is to evaluate your guitar-related habits. Obviously this means you need to scrutinize exactly what you’re doing on the guitar, how often you’re doing it, how it feels, what results you’re getting, and so forth. Any aspect of your routine that feels the least bit sketchy needs to change.

So how do you switch things up? Well, you should start by looking into some guitar practice tips. Unless you’re an advanced player already, you might not even be aware of what you could be doing to improve.

Until you understand some of the best practice methods (e.g. slow playing, isolating difficult passages, technical drills, sight-reading, focusing on the music itself. . .) you won’t know what changes you ought to make in the first place.

One of the most simple changes that virtually everyone can make is to slow down their playing. Most guitarists practice too fast, which often leads to mistakes and frustration. Even if you change nothing else, slowing down will work wonders for you.

The best way to get started is to play a piece of music you already know much slower than normal. Repeat that a few times, and you’ll find your accuracy greatly increased once you speed up again. Even slowing down mid-session could qualify as “switching up your routine!”

I really can’t advocate enough the power of the short practice session. If you think of “practice” as playing for an hour at a time, then how often are you going to be able to commit yourself to a session?

The key is to rethink the whole concept of “practicing guitar.” You don’t want to say to yourself, “I’m going to practice from 4-5 every day this week.” What you want to do is break that hour into a bunch of smaller chunks, anywhere from 5-30 minutes long.

The short sessions approach will enable you to take the same amount of time you used to practice (say, 1 hour/day) and extend it across the whole day. And if you normally play 1 hour every other day, you’ll be much better off playing 30 minutes every day!

Maybe first thing in the morning you can squeeze in 15 minutes of scales. Then in the afternoon you can put in half an hour. Then you find another 10 minutes to fiddle around before dinner. Finally, you squeeze in 5 more minutes before bed. That’s still an hour total, but you’ve made so much more of it!

Practicing in short sessions leads to a greater frequency of playing. This means your brain starts to recognize guitar playing as a very common activity for you, like walking, eating, or drinking. You begin to create the illusion in your mind that you’re always playing. This is absolutely key to attaining fluency on the guitar.

A focused, 10-minute session will almost certainly leave you wanting more. However, if you chain yourself to the guitar for an hour, you’ll probably be dreading the next session. It’s much better to build up your relationship with the guitar by degrees rather than forcing it.

There’s nothing more exciting than learning new music! If you’re feeling bored with your playing routine, then taking on a fresh piece could be just what you need.

I would go so far as to recommend you learn new music on a daily basis. That’s why I believe in sight-reading as often as possible. Sight-reading is the art of playing through a new piece of music without practicing it beforehand. If you’re not doing much of that, then it might be time to start.

But I know that sight-reading may seem like a tall order. Can guitar players really learn to play music at sight? You might feel like learning a new piece is a huge challenge—let alone playing it through right away. It’s almost hard to imagine that’s possible.

Fortunately, sight-reading is possible. And not only possible, but entirely within your grasp.

First off, I’m willing to bet that you’ve already done some sight-reading. Ever looked up how to play a song you like on guitar, got some chords, tabs, or standard notation off the internet, then just tried to play it? If so, then you’re already a reader with some experience.

The secret is to build off that experience. Try to dedicate a few minutes each day to sight-reading. If you do it right, it can be the best part of your practice time (if not your day). If you’re looking for a beginner’s tutorial on sight-reading, check out this post!

Often the best way to get out of a boring practice rut is to find some inspiration to improve. You should seek out a few of the influences that got you playing guitar in the first place. After all, didn’t most of you start playing because you admired someone else’s playing and wanted to be like them?

For me, that player was Sungha Jung. He’s an outstanding fingerstyle guitarist I found on Youtube a few years ago. I was inspired by this video in particular, which is his cover of “Let It Go” from the movie Frozen.

Sungha Jung helped me to realize the possibilities of guitar playing—how exciting and virtuosic it could be. He basically added (and continues to add) fuel to my fire.

Everyone has their own guitar heroes. If you don’t have a few players that you really look up to, I suggest you watch some videos of great guitarists until you find something that really catches your eyes and ears.

Even though you might be spellbound by the abilities of elite guitar players, avoid saying to yourself that you’ll never be as good as them. Rather, try to imagine how someone might get to their level and try to emulate that process in your own life. You’ll be way more eager to practice if you think you’re on track to be great than if you think you’ll be mediocre at best.

At the end of the day, it’s mostly in your head! Getting inspired is all about improving your mental game, about cultivating a productive frame of mind in relation to the guitar.