If you do have limited time to practice, it’s crucial that you don’t allow any distractions at all during the time you’ve allocated.

Again, this will have to be negotiated with other household members (if any), who should know that your practice time is only for practice. Unless there is an emergency you cannot be interrupted for any reason. This will enable you to take full advantage of the session and to benefit from the state of ‘flow’ that Dr. Bradberry suggests above.

Ignore those Facebook notifications and text messages – they can wait until after your session. In fact, just turn the darn phone off!

There is another aspect to distraction that is more subtle, but equally disruptive – inner distractions.

You know what I’m talking about: thoughts about some pressing deadline you have at work, the checklist of things to buy at the grocery store or things you need to organize for an upcoming gig.

Just like external distractions, inner distractions steal your focus and can make your practice session unproductive.

So, develop ways to quieten the inner distractions. Give yourself mental space and permission to work only on your jazz guitar playing before you start each practice session.

Meditation could be something to look into if you’re struggling with dealing with inner distractions, check out this page on my website for more details.

#7: Structure Your Practice Session and Avoid Useless Exercises

It’s one thing to make the time to practice jazz guitar, it’s another thing to actually use the time well.

At this point, have a think about how you structure your practice session. Get out a piece of paper and write down right now what you’ve been doing lately in the woodshed. Now look carefully – could this be improved? Is each session leading meaningfully to the next? And most importantly, have you established clear objectives for each session?

I had a discussion with one of my guitar students I teach online recently who indicated he had, in his own words, spent “a large part of his life memorizing all Drop 2 and Drop 3 inversions, every scale position of melodic minor, and an encyclopedia of arpeggio patterns”.

However, if these exercises are not directed into actually making music, i.e. learning tunes or developing technique, this kind of study can waste a lot of precious practice time.

Be careful not to whittle away your practice time on endless exercises. When studying jazz guitar, all exercises should be practiced with the intention of applying it to a particular tune or set of changes – they are not an end in themselves.

In some upcoming posts that are planned for this blog, we’re going to go into a lot of detail about what makes a good jazz guitar practice session and how to structure it effectively, as well as some great books I can recommend on the subject. In the meantime, have a think about what the real core components are that you need to focus on.

At the moment, my focus is building repertoire and vocabulary, so this is my personal current practice schedule: