I tell myself every morning when I’m planning my day, “Hey, don’t forget to play your guitar tonight for 15 minutes”! Usually I think that I will get that practice time in the evening after I get home from work and after I eat supper.
Do I play strictly for the 15 minutes? Some nights yes but other nights I end up playing for 30 minutes to an hour. The point is really to make sure I play it every day. On the weekends, I sometimes find time to play for 2 hours a day, however on some weekends I only get the 15 minutes per day! On the days I found 2 hours to practice I always started off by telling myself that I only need to practice for 15 minutes and then it turned into 2 hours of total practice time.
The problem for me, has been probably what it will be for you. Some nights I get home from work and I’m tired. All I want to do is have supper and sit in front of the TV for an hour and just relax. If I do that and tell myself that after this program, I need to turn the TV off and practice something on my guitar for an hour then I usually talk myself out of it easily enough because I’m thinking of it as ONE HOUR. When I think to myself “all I need to do is 15 minutes” then it becomes a lot easier to get up and pick up my guitar and just start playing it.
I have also tried to practice without giving up my TV time by trying to practice what I’m working on while I watch my next show. That usually doesn’t work very well except to open my eyes to the realization that there is a lot of background music on the shows and commercials that I’m watching. I have also noticed there is less music being played on any show compared to commercials because I find it easier to play and listen to my guitar music during a given show episode but find it near impossible to hear anything I play when a commercial is on. That’s why I find it best to turn the TV off while I practice. You can try it if you want to see what I’m talking about and perhaps after competing with the TV music with your own music you might get frustrated enough to turn the TV off if your resolve is to master that song.
You can also read this post on my blog: http://patrickgallagherbluesguitar.com/practice-15-minutes-every-day-part-1/