How mini challenges can transform your practice

There’s a trap in learning guitar that more people than ever are falling into. The problem is that in many ways, there’s never been a better time to learn guitar. There are thousands of YouTube videos, articles and courses explaining anything you could ever want to know. But that makes it hard to avoid the ‘information trap’, where guitarists spend too much time consuming information and not enough time actually practicing. It feels productive to watch videos or read articles, but when you don’t combine it with practice on your instrument, it isn’t doing much for you.

You can avoid this by following what I’ve coined the 90-10 Practice Rule: spend 10% of your time learning new information and 90% practicing it. Skills don’t come from reading about something or watching a video, but from doing it, over and over, until it’s truly internalized. You might understand what intervals are after watching a ten minute explainer. But for that information to actually help you in your daily playing? That requires practice. In short, guitar is a homework instrument.

So alright, we need to practice more. But that leads to the real question: how do you actually practice effectively? We’ll take a brief look at how most musicians practice, before I suggest a different approach that makes it easier to focus and feel a sense of progress. It tends to help you learn faster and better as well.

The problem with open-ended practice

Here’s what a typical practice session looks like for many guitarists. You’re working on a song or a riff. You play it through and make a mistake somewhere. So you play it again. Mistake. Again. Another mistake, different spot this time. You keep going for a while, sometimes nailing it, sometimes not, until you get frustrated or bored and move on to something else.

The same problem happens in other practice areas, like ear training or fretboard knowledge. For example, there are lots of fretboard trainers out there. Almost all of them give you all 72 notes to practice at once and basically tell you ‘good luck’. You’re spreading your attention over 72 different notes, which makes it really hard to feel progress. (It’s why I built StringKick’s fretboard note trainer to work differently, focusing on small groups of notes at a time. More on that idea later!)

Think of it like cleaning a floor: you can throw your mop around and make everything a little cleaner, or you can scrub one tile until it’s spotless. The second approach feels more satisfying and it actually gets the floor cleaner too.

Think in mini challenges

Now what does this look like when you’re practicing music? That’s where mini challenges come in. A mini challenge is a small, focused practice task with a clear definition of when you’ve beaten it, and a built-in way to make it harder.

So, instead of sitting down with a vague goal like “practice this song,” where you spread your attention over the entire thing, try breaking it down into the smallest possible challenge. Something you think you should be able to nail within a minute or two.

Say you’re working on a tricky riff at 120 BPM. Instead of just playing it over and over, try this: can I play this riff perfectly five times in a row at 60 BPM? It’s deliberately slow. So slow that you think “I can definitely do this.” But the five times in a row part is what makes it interesting. Even at a low tempo, stringing together five flawless repetitions requires real focus and consistency. Once you beat the challenge, bump the tempo up a few BPM and try again.

That’s a mini challenge. It’s small, it’s clear, and it has a definite outcome: you either did it or you didn’t. It allows you to track your progress. Perhaps in the first practice session you get from 60 to 80 BPM. Then in the next to 95, and so on.

You can apply this to almost anything you’re practicing. Here are a few more ideas to get you started:

For timing

Pick something you can play comfortably, a riff, a scale, a strumming pattern. Then grab a metronome. Start by having it click on every beat. Play along until you’re locked in. Now, start removing clicks. First, let’s remove beats 1 and 3 (this makes the click sound like a drummer hitting the snare drum on beats 2 and 4). Next, remove the second beat, so you only have beat 4 left. Still solid? Try beat 4 every two bars. Then every three bars. How long can you go between clicks and still land right on it when it comes back around? That gap between clicks is your high score and you’ll be surprised how quickly it improves once you start tracking it.

For ear training

Figure out a song by ear. This is almost a natural mini challenge when you simply go at it one note at a time. Find it, write it down and move on to the next note!

For fretboard navigation

Take a lick you already know well, something short, maybe three or four notes. You can play it in your sleep in its usual position. Now try to play it somewhere else on the fretboard. Same notes, different place. It’s a bit like a puzzle. Because the lick itself is familiar, all your focus goes into navigating the unfamiliar territory, which is exactly the part you want to improve. Try with longer licks for more challenge!

It’s this idea of small, clear, progressive challenges that I’ve been building StringKick Games around. Whether it’s fretboard knowledge, ear training, or any of the examples above, the key is to create a challenge you believe you can beat, a clear way to know when you’ve done it, and always a next level.

Why this works

So what makes these mini challenges so effective? There’s a few reasons and they all come down to how our brains work.

The Goldilocks zone

There’s a concept in learning science called the “flow channel”, based on psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s work. When something is too easy, you get bored. When it’s too hard, you get frustrated or anxious and quit. The sweet spot is in between, where you feel challenged enough to stay engaged, but not so overwhelmed that it feels impossible. Mini challenges hit this zone naturally. By starting at a level where you’re confident you can succeed and then gradually raising the bar, you stay in that productive middle ground. You’re always working right at the edge of your ability, which is exactly where improvement happens.

Failing feels different

When you fail at an open-ended practice goal, “I want to master this song”, it can feel like the whole thing is out of reach. But when you fail a mini challenge, for example you get four perfect repetitions but stumble on the fifth, it often feels different. It’s more: “I almost had it! One more try.” That’s a crucial difference. The challenge is scoped small enough that success feels attainable. You can see exactly what went wrong and you know you can do better with one more round of focused effort.

Small wins add up

With a mini challenge, you know right away whether you succeeded or not. There’s no ambiguity. This kind of immediate feedback is one of the most powerful drivers of learning. Every mini challenge you complete is a small win. And small wins are motivating. They create momentum. When you clear one challenge, doing the next one feels like the obvious thing to do. Not like a chore, but like a game you want to keep playing. Before you know it, you’ve been practicing for thirty minutes and it felt like five.

Your Turn!

You’ve now spent a few minutes reading about practice. So here’s your next step: put the article down, pick up your guitar, and turn one thing you’re working on into a mini challenge. That’s the 90-10 Practice Rule in action!