This is a very crucial matter if you desire to learn not just guitar but anything really.
If you ask around, people will advise you that exercising at the least four hours/day is the best way to learn to paly guitar fast. Well, a lot of comments could be made to this statement.
First of all, playing the guitar involves many skills that require to be practiced separately. Here are a few:
* Right hand exercises (finger/plectrum picking, rhythm)
* Left hand (practicing chord changes, scales, arpeggios etc...)
* Reading
* Sight Singing
* Ear Training
* improvisation
These are just a few aspects of guitar playing of course but each of them calls for conscious attention in order to be mastered.
So, what do you do? Do you spend hours and hours practicing each single skill? before
moving to the next one?
Do that and you will soon get absolutely bored only by the idea of going to your practice room!
What you can actually do is to choose to practice 3 times a week. In my experience, 3 hours/session are plenty.
Here's what I like doing. I work on 2 or 3 skills that I want to develop. For example:
* Chord changes
* Rhythmic patterns
* Improvisation on a particular song that I decided to add up to my repertoire
That's lots, believe me! Once I have decided the topics, I split my practicing time into 3 (e.g., 45 minutes on each topic/skill). I also take breaks, drink some tea, stretch etc...every 20-30 minutes
In doing so, you give your brain the chance to work on as many as skills as possible, skills that are required to work together during performance. The last, and perhaps, most central step, is to spend the last 20-30 minutes practicing just for the fun of it. With no attachment whatsoever to the outcome. In doing so, you'll relax, feel free of making mistakes and guess what...you'll practice playing out of your intuition, with no rules to observe...
This, altogether, will leave in your brain a feeling of pleasure that will motivate you to start your next practicing session. Practicing even difficult tasks will become fun.
and not a chore...
So, to summarize...
Go to your practice room, spend only a few minutes practicing one single skill and then stop. After a few minutes, a good cup of coffee and some stretching, start working on something else...you will rapidly develop a regular practicing schedule that will take your guitar playing to the next level in no time.