If you've read this far, I assume you're either curious or you genuinely want to be the best possible guitarist. Before I tell you what the secret, I want you to test yourself and see if you can figure it out yourself. I want you to take out a piece of paper and write down this quote.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." ~ Aristotle

Now, I want you to write down what you did every day for the past week. Now remove the essential tasks from your list (work, school, homework, meals, etc.). Next, prioritize this list and list the amount of time spent on each for the week. We now have a list of your leisure activities and their importance to you.

This list that you just made represents your time. It is the time that you use for leisure. Now for the big question, "What do you repeatedly do?" These are your actions and they are what define you. Now, I want you to prioritize practicing guitar on this list and take time from the items below it to ensure you have 30 minutes per day. This is now you time! It is guitar time.

Congratulations, you just made time to repeatedly practice guitar. You're already ahead of 95% of the guitarists out there, but this is only one half of the story.

How to Improve as Much as Possible

So far we have put aside time like we (should) budget our money. We pay for essentials first. We save the rest for our other activities. How do we save this money though? You could put it under your mattress, in a bank, or in the stock market. So far you have dedicated money (in the form of 30 minutes per day) towards your goal of being the best possible guitarist. Now, you are going to learn how to get interest on your savings by multiplying the benefits of your practice time. I am not going to show you how to repeatedly practice your guitar; I am going to show you how to repeatedly improve your guitar playing.

There is an unspoken ingredient to excellence that Aristotle's quote does not tell you in the quote. Aristotle does not tell you what you should repeatedly do to obtain excellence.

To obtain guitar playing excellence, you must play the guitar repeatedly. We have that covered (30 minutes a day, right?). However, if you only play pentatonic scales, you will only obtain guitar excellence while using pentatonic scales. I don't want you to obtain guitar playing excellence. I want you to obtain excellence in improving your own guitar playing.

You are about to learn how to repeatedly improve your guitar playing. You have already budgeted how often you will improve your playing (every day, 30 minutes per day). Now we're going to maximize this daily improvement.

To maximize your improvement, you need clear, achievable, and measurable goals that work toward your goals. Take out your paper again and write down your ultimate goal. Under it write the three most important actions that you can take to achieve that goal. Under each of those three actions, write the three most important things to achieving them. Repeat this until you are down to the most simple, clear, and achievable goals.

Next we're going to assign the amount of time each task will take. Take the goals at the bottom of this hierarchy and write down how much time each goal will take. Go up one level in the hierarchy and add the times for the tasks underneath it. Repeat until every task in the hierarchy has a time. You now know how long each task will take.

Next, prioritize the actions at the lowest levels of the hierarchy. Guess what this is... This is your practice schedule! You now have a practice schedule of simple, achievable goals that will constantly work towards your ultimate goal as a guitarist. You will be maximizing your practice time!

To conclude, I simply have to ask you one question, "If I gave you a bottom-of-the-line guitar, what would happen?"