How To Use Spaced Practice To Improve Your Playing
Guess what I have a practice problem. I didn’t practice yesterday and that’s okay!
After two months of solid daily practice for at least 15 minutes (normally closer to an hour these days) a day I missed a few days. Now as a teacher it’s a really common practice problem, however it doesn’t mean you’ll go backwards in fact by taking a few days off. Thanks to a practice technique called: “Spaced Practice”
Spaced Practice — A Learning Tool For Days Off!
Spaced Practice is a learning strategy, where practice is broken up into a number of short sessions — over a longer period of time.
This definition itself explains it all…by taking a day off you giving yourself time to forget stuff, which although that sounds rather rubbish — it is in fact really helpful!
“Forgetting focuses remembering and fosters learning” — Bjork, 2011, p 16.
By stepping away from the guitar for a short while, it means you have to work that little bit harder to remember what you played yesterday or two days ago…it means that by working that little bit harder — you end up progressing far faster!
When you “forget something” it’s not actually gone as such — it’s just hidden you need to retrieve it. The more you retrieve information the more you build Myelin the faster you can retrieve that information.
So…Daily Practice isn’t necessary?
That’s the tricky question…the answer to which is something you’ve got to decide. You don’t have to practice daily, but bare in mind if you don’t it’ll take you far longer to learn that song, to improve your skills and to get better.
This blog post wasn’t designed to be an excuse on why I’ve been playing Marvel’s Spider Man but the cold hard truth of life is that sometimes, things go wrong, and you don’t end up practicing whether it’s because you’ve gotta get dishes done, finish your homework or you’re playing that awesome new video game that’s just come out!
Unless you have:
- No friends or family
- No housework (or no house)
- No other responsibilities
You will not practice daily however, that doesn’t mean you should try to practice daily. Don’t let this common practice problem stop you from learning guitar, you can always go back…just because you took a day off, it doesn’t mean you’ll never improve it just means you’re using spaced practice!
