Originally Posted by: ChristopherSchlegelHey, there! Those are great exercises for building manual dexterity! :)
When you fist start playing it's perfectly okay to look at everything you need to look at in order to make sure your fingers are doing what they should be doing.

Sometimes it can help to just do one hand at a time. Just go through the motions of the exercise with your fretting hand & watch it carefully to make sure you are doing everything right. Don't worry about picking at all.

If it helps, do the same with the picking hand, just watch & pick the strings without worrying about fretting the notes.

After you do those separate tasks for a while, then try to put them together.

You can look at either hand while you are building your skills! Obviously it's tricky to look at both hands at once, so you might need to focus on one, then the other.

In the long run, yes. You should gradually work toward the goal of not having to look at what you are doing 100% of the time. But you need to be patient with yourself & realize that is a long term goal! As long as you are seriously, consistently, diligently practicing that muscle memory will come with time logged on the guitar. So, don't make "not looking" a specific goal. It's not necessary going to help you play better faster. Although it might make a beginner guitarists more frustrated faster. :D

And you should never worry about if it's okay to look at your hands! Yes, it's perfectly acceptable to watch what you are doing to make sure it's going okay. That's what your eyes are for. :)

Hope this helps! Best of success!