Make Real Progress by Practicing with "Intention"

Stuck playing the same licks but not getting better? This conversation maps a clear path from autopilot to intentional practice so your limited time turns into visible progress and real confidence on the fretboard. We unpack how to set precise goals, track your growth, and build pillars of skill that stack into the kind of player you actually want to be.

We start by separating maintaining from improving, then show how to convert vague aims like “learn scales” into exact targets such as clean alternate picking through pentatonic position one at a set tempo. From chord transitions that ring true to timing that locks with a click, we focus on micro goals you can measure. You’ll hear practical tactics: slow practice to expose flaws, isolation drills to fix them, and short recording check-ins to keep you honest. We also talk daily structure—why warm-ups are maintenance, not growth—and how to theme practice days around technique, creativity, theory, or fretboard visualization.

Overwhelm is a real blocker, so we tackle information overload and the myth that you must learn everything at once. If your next milestone is expressive blues, you don’t need sweeps tomorrow; you need bend intonation, vibrato, and note targeting over I–IV–V. We walk through using the CAGED system to see the neck, connecting shapes with purpose, and planning backward from your 90‑day goal. Then we fit it all to your time budget with a simple loop: define, drill, apply, reflect. When you focus on less, you progress more—and motivation follows.

If you’re ready to turn practice into proof, hit play and bring a notebook. Subscribe, share this with a guitar friend who’s stuck, and leave a review with the one skill you’ll target this week.

Thanks for being here!! I will continue to do my best to bring you the best, most informative guitar discussions to help you along your guitar journey!

The more you share this podcast with others, the more I can continue to grow this channel and offer the best information and advice I can to you.
Thank you!
Steve

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 1:10 Practicing vs Noodling
• 3:22 Maintain, Improve, Or Backslide
• 6:03 Defining Intentional Practice
• 8:52 Micro Goals For Scales And Chords
• 12:52 Slow Down, Isolate, Repeat
• 16:00 Daily Structure And Warm Ups

Transcript

Steve: 0:35

Hey, Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom Academy here. And today what I'd like to do is talk to you about the difference between practicing with intention versus just practicing. Okay, the first thing to understand, in my opinion, is practicing versus noodling. Okay, I'm not saying that there aren't times that noodling on the guitar, as we call it, might not be beneficial. It can be. The problem is in the long term, if we're not actually focusing on things that we want to get better at, we're not going to get better at them. So what I want you to understand is practicing with an intention versus practicing. Practicing says, you know, pick up the guitar and work on these things that I've worked on before or new things that I've got, which is great. That's important. But practicing with intention says, okay, what I'm going to do is, you know, right now I'm going to focus on a specific skill or a specific idea within an idea. So we're going to get into that today. So if you think about it, practicing doesn't necessarily just make you better. Intentional practice, specific practice is what we're looking for. Okay. You can play guitar every day and you're still not necessarily going to improve. The things, these are very obvious things, but always remember that you're either a maintaining, like you're just, you're, you're going through whatever it is that you do. We do this a lot in life. You know, you're just doing the same thing over and over and over. It's not getting better, it's not getting worse, but it's not getting any better. That's that's maintaining, of course. The next thing is trying to elevate or improve in what it is that we're doing. And the third thing, of course, which is the worst thing, is is backsliding, getting worse at whatever it is that we're doing. So the thing to understand is we can play guitar every day and still not improve. We might maintain, but we're not improving. Okay. That's a huge difference between playing and practicing. Okay. And practicing with intention is what we're going to talk about. So what you need to do when it comes to practicing with intention is you need to know what you're working on. You want to know why you're working on it, and you want to know how to tell if you're actually improving on it. You've got to be able to find some measurable way of being able to tell whether what you're doing is making a difference. Okay. So, you know, we think about things like, you know, let's take a student who plays for an hour, plays the same licks, same song, same scales, that sort of thing. Working on comfortable material. Okay. No clear goal, uh, no awareness of what is actually needed, just going through the motions, playing the same things over and over and over and over. Now, I'm not saying again, this is bad. What I'm saying is when you do that, you're just not going to find yourself doing much for elevation. Okay. So, what is practicing with intention? Okay. We think about it this way: like focus on what it is you want to improve on. So instead of saying to yourself, hey, I'm going to work on scales, I'm going to work on the pentatonic scale, that's great. That's great. But maybe what we need to say is I need to work on my picking skill through the first position. Or I need to do a better job of memorizing, visualizing the second position of the scale that I'm looking for, right? Or I'm going to pull out my metronome and I'm going to work on the speed, the clarity, the, you know, the accuracy of my picking at this particular speed, and I'm going to continue to get better at that. Or I'm going to work on uh learning how to phrase within the first position of the pentatonic scale, or I'm going to connect the first and the second. There's a million things that you could do when you start thinking about it that way. You know, chords, okay? Not just learning chords or playing chords, but how how clean and clear and accurate and efficient am I of moving from, for instance, the creating the G chord? How accurate am I? How quickly can I make that and do it correctly, right? Working on that over and over and over, or transitioning between G and C and working on that and paying attention to the specifics of the movement. Am I doing it clean? Am I doing it clear? Is it accurate? When I strum through, are all the notes working? What is it that I'm actually working on? And there's a million ways that we can look at this, but the more you you kind of deep dive into the specifics of what you're actually trying to achieve, the more you can get out of it. That's what's really important about this. Okay. So things that you can do, okay, slow down your process, okay, isolate certain things, reduce the tempo, right? Simplify what it is that you're trying to do, repeat it over and over and over, and really pay attention to the specifics of what it is that you're trying to improve on, and then get better at that. So for me, that's the most important thing when it comes to practicing with intention, is you've really got to pay attention to what it is. So let's let's take a scenario here. Let's say it's Tuesday, and we wake up and we decide we're gonna grab the guitar and play. Well, the first thing you might do throughout the day is you might do some warm-ups, some simple warm-ups that you're doing. So this might require a little less intention, but the intention is that you want to warm up your fingers, warm up your mind. You know, once you get to a certain age like me, you might actually do pre-warm-ups where, you know, with arthritis and things like that, I have to do certain um specific things throughout the morning to get myself to a place where I can actually play the way I want to play. And so I have a routine. I'm not trying to get better. This is a maintenance thing. This is just a, you know, I wake up and my fingers don't work very well. And so I go through this routine to get me to a state where I'm I'm ready to go for the rest of my day. That's what that pre-practice is. But that's that's the intention is to get me into that place. Once we get to wherever it is we're going to go, then we have to start thinking about, okay, so what it is that I want to work on today. We might start with broad strokes, right? It's Tuesday, so today is a creative practice day, or today is a technique day, or today is a theory day, or today is a fretboard visualization day, right? Some broad strokes of things that we we want to work on today. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna start zooming in. Okay, now we've decided today is going to be a fretboard visualization day. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is again decide what specifically is it that I need to try and work on for visualization. Maybe it's a cage system that I'm trying to get better at, but I need to step back and understand what is the cage system? What is this thing? How does it actually work? Before I start worrying about trying to memorize things on the fretboard, I first have to comprehend what it is that I'm doing with this and and how it's going to impact me. Then I can start actually working on the visualization of it, whether it's one position or two positions or all the positions, again, depending on where I am. The most important thing for me isn't how much you can do. It's how well you can do whatever it is that you're trying to do. So the problem I find with a lot of players is that they're so busy trying to learn new stuff or over, you know, overwhelmed with videos on YouTube or whatever it might be, that we're just constantly testing the waters on something and then moving on and then trying something else and then moving on and trying something else. It's like we're just doing these little, you know, we're dipping our toes in the water and then we're moving on, and then we're dipping our toes in the water and we're moving on. It's very difficult to ingest these things and make them something that is actually going to change you. And so we've got to learn how to focus on what it is that we need to get to where we want to go. Where are you? Where do you want to go? And what are the things that you need to focus on to actually get you there? Once you get that idea, these are the things that I really need to focus on. Not that I have to be this player person and this player and this, and I have to play rock, and I have to play jazz, and I have to play blues, and I have to. Again, maybe someday you're gonna do all that, but you have to start with something and start building it. Otherwise, you're always gonna be confused, you're gonna be lost, and you're just gonna be all over the place. So you have to start really refining. Think of information almost as like a drug that we're addicted to and we're always looking for new information. That might not be a bad idea if we've already built the structure or the column, if you will, of who you are. But if you haven't built that yet, all of this stuff is just a mess of information that just keeps throwing you around in the wind. And that's not going to get you anywhere. So you have to start really trying to be diligent about what I am trying to do? What do I want to be able to do? And then start refining what you need and the order in which you need it. You see? So if you're, you know, you want to learn how to become a really great lead player, you want to learn how to play melodically and phrase and all these things, that's important. But you need to back step to see what it is that you need to get there first. Where are you at with your fretboard? Where are you at with your technique? Where are you at with some of your theory? Again, you don't need to be um, you know, third-year collegiate Berkeley student to learn how to do this stuff. You've got to, you've got to figure out the balance of how much you need of each one of these things. You see, that's why for me, the first thing is identifying with where you want to go and what it is that you need. The second thing is is taking that information and trying to put it in order. The third thing is is making broad strokes of what it is that you you need to focus on in terms of your skills, in terms of your visualization, your understanding of your fretboard, your theory, your creativity or your musicality, all of these different kinds of things. Then you start focusing in with intention. What is it that specifically I need to get better at? I need to visualize better. If I can't see it, I can't play it. Not with any element of confidence and absolution. I just can't. So I might have to visualize something. And then I've got to start getting in there and figuring out how does it actually work? What's wrong with my approach, right? Are my fingers doing what they need to be doing? Is everything comfortable? Is there a particular finger I'm struggling with or a particular kind of picking attack or angle or whatever it might be? All of these kind of things. This is the intention. This is the micro aspect of it, and figuring out where your problem spots are. One thing I want you to think about, like when I talk to students, especially, you know, people that are joining the academy, is getting them to understand perspective, like we've been talking about. Let me give you an example. If I get a student that comes in and says, hey, you know, I really love blues, I really want to learn how to solo in, you know, the vein of blues and be able to do it authentically and just let myself go and jam and you know, play with friends and play on stage or whatever it might be. Okay, now we got a plan. Then we also need to think about the things that we don't need at this point. If this person comes to me and says, I love BB King and I love, you know, whatever, Eric Clapton and David Gilmore or whatever it might be, whatever. What I don't say to them, okay, well, then what you need to do is learn how to shred, right? You need to do a lot of finger tapping and arpeggios and sweeps and shredding. Now, I'm not saying they might not like that too. What I'm saying is, if they've decided in their head that the first stage of this bigger picture of who they want to become as a player, is getting into the blues realm and figuring this out and becoming something, like making this a column, again, uh a pillar of who they are. We need to figure out what they need and what they don't need. Because if we're constantly focusing on everything, we'll never get there. And if we're focusing on things that we don't need at this point, it's getting in the way of the things that we should be focusing on, the intention. So I'm not going to sit there and go, okay, well, you need to be able to place, you know, 16th notes at 180 beats per minute, blah, blah, blah. That's not what they're looking for. That might be something that they're looking for at some point, but that's not our primary focus right now. So we have to thin out the things that we know we don't need, and we need to focus on the things that we do to actually start making um elevation, forward motion, and feel that. So we become motivated. We're excited that things are actually working. You see, so that's that's really important, all of this stuff. And once you start developing that, it doesn't take long before you start recognizing that you can see yourself in your plan. You can see the reason why you're doing these things, why you're focusing on these specific things, why you're avoiding these things right now. Not that you don't love them and you don't want to do them, but they just don't serve a relevant purpose to building this pillar or this column that you need right now. We can cut, we can get to them. And ultimately, the reason I'm saying that is because every single human on this planet that wants to learn to play guitar has X amount of time that has to equate to X amount of practice. If you've got 30 minutes a day or 60 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day or whatever, that's great. Okay, that's that's who you are, that's what you've got available. Okay, let's work with that. And let's build a plan that actually fits what you've got available. If you've got 30 minutes a day and you're trying to sh, you know, slam 90 minutes of information in there, it's not gonna work. And that's where the problem is, is you've got to find a balance in there. So these are the things that I want you to think about when it comes to really trying to develop a plan. I honestly believe when you look at players that establish themselves early, again, whoever it might be, somebody on YouTube, an Eric Clapton, or a again, a David Gilmore, or whoever it might be, it's because they figured out right away what they wanted to do. It's not just because they were so skilled and born with some musical whatever. Maybe they were, I don't know. I know lots of players that are great players that weren't born with any specific amazing musical skill since they were an infant. You you develop it. You develop these things just like a singer or anybody. But you focus on the right things. And if you focus on the right things right away, this is what enables you to become an athlete that goes to the Olympics or you know, plays NFL or who knows, right? But that's the thing, is you figured out early who you want it to be. A lot of people spend their lives kind of sifting through and they don't really know what they want. And again, that's okay as long as you're okay with that. If you're not okay with that, that's when you have to stop and go, look, I need to, I need to find a solution to this. I need to find another way. And sometimes you need some help. Sometimes you need help trying to make a plan that actually works. So, anyway, hopefully this information will help you a little bit in trying to get yourself a little organized to be able to actually do the things that you want to do. If you struggle with this or you can't find the solution, or you find yourself always getting caught up in the messiness of videos and information and blah, blah, blah, the overload. I encourage you to check out the Guitar Zoom Academy. That's exactly what it is that we focus on is trying to get you organized. Okay, getting you a plan, keeping you accountable to whatever it is you're trying to do, make adjustments as we need as we go, and then work together. Like really, you know, work together, not through emails and you know, some sort of a PDF handout, but actually working together to get you where you need to go. Um, and reminding you along the way to stay focused, right? Not through intimidation or negativity, but you know, having real conversations with each other, developing a relationship to where we can actually trust each other and go, okay, you're doing this great. You're falling off on this. Let's stay on that. Let's get you to where you want to go. Those feelings that you have, that excitement that you've got about being able to play the way you want to play, you can't let that die. You got to find a way to be able to achieve that, but you got to be realistic about it. So, anyway, take care, stay positive, keep practicing, obviously. And hopefully this will help you a little bit to get yourself organized. And if you do need help, just reach out, okay?