Always know WHY you are practicing something...

If you don't you'll always be running blind into every false promise you allow yourself to be convinced by. Especially in the internet age where everybody is an expert, you MUST question everything, or you'll find yourself shelling out lots of money for fools gold. If there was an easy way I would show you, I promise! People who promise an easy ride are almost certainly full of smelly air!

After some guidelines on making your own Practice Schedule, we'll look at how I think you should decide on things to practice and set your schedule.

Practice Schedule Guidelines

The four (or five) principle areas of study:

Technique
This is going to the gym, your guitar fitness, and would include: scales with a metronome, finger gym, spider, legato exercises, bending, tapping, sliding, vibrato, sight reading (if needed), etc.

Knowledge
This is about learning things, scales, chords, theory, arpeggios, rhythm patterns, reading rhythms, licks, vocabulary, and thing you can gain knowledge in!

Ear Training / Transcribing
We hear music. Doesn't it make sense to spend at lease 25% of your time developing them. They are like muscles and can be worked on with Aural Training (Interval Ear Training) and by Transcribing. Most students who feel like "there is something missing" find the answer is this!

Repertoire
We all gotta learn songs, right? That's the point of it all. So learn some!

Improvising (for post Intermediate guitarists)
If you plan to be involved in improvised music then you need to practice improvising with a band of backing tracks!

Fun

But seriously... chill out already!! With all your practice you need to make sure you remember how to have fun and I recommend that you spend HALF your practice time messing around and having fun. That is unless you are doing 4 hours a day or more - which is professional amount and if you're doing that you should be getting advice from a great in person teacher!