New Years Resolutions for Guitar Players
With the new year coming round, you might be planning some resolutions regarding your guitar playing. Many people make new years resolutions with the best of intentions, but never stick to them. Let’s explore how you can set resolutions that you can stick to and achieve.
What Type of Resolution Should You Set?
There are many ways you can set a goal for your guitar playing. Any goal needs to fulfil the following conditions:
- It must be specific.
- It must be measurable.
- It must be something you can control.
- It must be realistically achievable.
As an example, “I want to get better at guitar” is not specific. In fact, it would be hard to set a goal that was more vague than “get better”.
A more specific and measurable goal might be “I want to be able to play 1000 notes per minute in the next six months”, but the problem with setting this as a goal is that you can’t control how fast you will improve, and you don’t know how long this will take.
Will achieving 1000 notes per minute take 30 hours of practice? 3000 hours of practice? It’s impossible to know, and this will be different for different people. Now, if this is something you want to achieve (or some other measure, such as learning 20 jazz standards, learning all the positions of the hirajoshi scale or a similar goal), then it is a legitemate goal to have, but this type of goal set’s your direction, what we are talking about for your new years resolution is deciding on your journey.
So what can you control? Here are some examples of goals that you can control:
- I’m going to practice for 30 minutes a day, every day.
- I’m going to take lessons with a teacher once a week.
- I’m going to get a music theory book and work on it four times a week, for thirty minutes each session.
- I’m going to take an online course and work on it for 45 minutes Friday to Sunday.
These goals are measurable, they involve something you control (how you spend your time). These are great goals to set, because it is within your power to achieve them.
You might set a goal of practising for two hours every day. Now, that would be great, and you’ll find you improve very quickly - but is that realistically achievable? Have you got a busy work and home schedule that will not allow for two hours a day of practice? When deciding, err on the side of caution and set somthing that is realistically achievable - you can always do more.
It is better to set a goal that you regularly exceed, than to set one you regularly fail.
The Key to Achieving Your Goals in 2026
So now that you have set a goal that is somehing you can measure, control and achieve; how do you go about achieving it?
- You have to schedule it and figure out a way to keep to that schedule.
- You have to anticipate what could disrupt and figure out how to handle that.
It’s time to grab a calendar! Schedule in the time you need to work on your goal - literally write it down in your calendar (or iCal, or Google Calendar or whatever it is you use).
Think about potential distractions and how you’ll deal with them. Do the kids need to know that for practice time you’re not to be disturbed?
Do you need to phone some local teachers and start booking introductory lessons? Or do some research on them?
Make sure that weekly time slot is in your calendar. Make it automatically recurring - and stick to it!
Conclusion
Hopefully that gives you a framework you can use to help make 2026 your best year ever for your guitar practice.
How to Practice Guitar & Train Your Creativity
The blueprint for effective practice and consistent improvement
Learn how to design practice sessions that actually move your playing forward, instead of noodling the same riffs forever.
- Turn 20 minutes into real progress
- Stop wasting time on mindless repetition
- Use creativity as a practice tool