Practicing with five-minute exercises

When I got a guitar as a gift and decided to practice playing it, I found a course online on Justin Sandercoes website. It is structured in small steps, and the corner-stone of the method is small five-minute exercises, with focus on different aspects, like chords, chord changes, and rhythm. This is beneficial for learning something which is difficult compared to existing habits for the hand and finger muscles (for guitar). In these five-minute exercises you’re using what Daniel Kahneman calls System 2, the slow thought system that is active when handling something new and unknown. And you’re building up a skill, such that it can be used by System 1 which is instinctive, rapid and automatic. There’s also a fine book in Danish on this subject: Bliv bedre med fokuseret træning by Susanne Bargmann and Ulrik Elholm.

I followed the guitar course, and found good progress. Especially satisfying was to measure my speed and capabilities, and see how it quickly improved.

I have used five-minute exercises for improving different skills, for example:

• Guitar (as detailed above)
• Voice training (strength and tone)
• Communication (non-violent communication and negotiation)
• Coaching (different principles and techniques)

How to do it:

• Set goals, for guitar for example to change between two specific chords 60 times per minute
• Break into five-minute exercises
• Create a schedule of 30-60 minutes of different exercises
• Do the schedule 4-5 times per week
• Log how well you do each exercise, for example number of chord changes, or a subjective evaluation on a scale from 1 to 5

When I see the measurable progress in a specific area, I get a great sense of satisfaction, and I believe that the method outlined here has helped me achieve this.
References:

• https://www.justinguitar.com/ by Justin Sandercoe (online guitar course)
• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann (book)
• Bliv bedre med fokuseret træning by Susanne Bargmann and Ulrik Elholm (book in Danish)