The older I get...

Indeed, it becomes a problem for many people.
One thing I found out recently, is that anatomists found out playing more than 5 hours a day can be somewhat counter productive to progress, due to not giving tendons/muscles required for playing the necessary time to to rebuild properly, much in the same way as athletes/body builders etc only train for a certain amount of time each day, have days off and time off to allow muscles/tendons to recuperate to prevent injuries and to enhance progress.
So don't worry if you don't have time for 10 hour a day manic practice schedules like some people seem to do. Hell, Steve Vai, one of my all time favorite guitarists, used to practice 10 hours a day when he was around my age (but now he runs a charity foundation, a record label and has a family, so obviously he no longer has the time to 10 hours anymore), but he was just lucky not to have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or Tendinitis by now.
There are heaps of virtuosos that practiced 4-5 hours a day, and still have just as much, if not even more skill than Vai.

Part of my solution, was to completely give up watching TV. Whenever I used to watch TV, I play guitar, which I find way more fulfilling and fun anyway than watching TV.
Given a 5 hour a day limit and a 24, I might play -35 hours a day, revise/study theory for an hour, sleep for 8 hours a day, which is 12-14 hours of my day, leaving me with 8 or so hours for the internet and other leisurely activities. Heck, even a person working 8 hours a day, factor in 16 hours of sleep work, maybe an hour travelling to and from work, 7 hours left, maybe some exercise, family time, surely there is at least a 2 hour spot in there for practicing, if at least, one hour.
You have to make sacrifices to be good, no doubt, as being a great musician is a harder thing to be than many other things in life, but I mean, if you wanna go see a movie with friends, do that, if you wanna go out on a date or something, do it, don't stop other aspects of your life because you honestly believed you need 12 hours a day to practice (because you don't and shouldn't practice that much anyway), you need balance in there.
Indeed, this is a point for all musicians, not just the original poster of the thread and indeed, at the minimum aim for 2 hours a day, because I used to practice only 2 a day, and I progressed faster with focused 2 hour practice than people that practice 6-8 hours a day just not really knowing what to practice.


Edited by HughesJB4 - August 14 2008 at 08:35

WORD. Practice makes perfect and no matter what schedule you have you should practice AT LEAST an hour. An hour isn't long anyways. And like others have said just get rid of doing useless time wasting activities like TV or too many movies. Or just blow off homework.

Should someone who mentions "homework" as a potential conflict with participation in music be posting in a thread titled "The Older I get"?