Hi newb1e,

This tends to very greatly from person to person, depending on your skill level, individual areas of difficult (and ease!), and interests. I am sure someone else will have more concrete advice, but here are some TIPS I have picked up over the years that help me:

1. Practice in ~45 minute chunks with a break of ~15 minutes. I think Cal Newport says that ~45 minutes is an optimim chunk of focus and anything longer than that without a break (getting up and walking around, stretching, take a drink of water) can lead to diminishing returns.

2. I hear it said that shorter daily practice is better than, for instance, a single practice that is 8 hours long in one day once a week. :) That seems reasonable to me.

3. It's important to work on things that inspire you to keep at it. If at some point you get stuck and don't feel like you're making any progress on a certain area after several weeks (Thing A), set it aside and come back to it. Move on to another song or scale or technique (Thing B). You might find that after some time of focusing on Thing B, Thing A will suddenly be easier.

4. Set easy, attainable goals. For instance, you could start your practice session with the goal of "I want to be able to play Thing A, starting at 80 bpm and increase it to 100 bpm and still have it feel good and solid." If you do this repeatedly and keep increasing slowly, you'll be surprised at how much progress you make over time. AND you'll be succeeding at goals constantly. This always feels good.

5. Try to also work in some practice that is just light-hearted and enjoyable. The other day I set up some backing tracks and just improvised at random in scale shapes. All I did was determine the key and go for it. By the time I looked up, an hour had gone by and my hands had gotten a great workout.

If I think of any other practice tips I'll share them, too.

-Carl.