Stop Chasing Gear, Start Making Music

Feeling stuck even with endless lessons, tabs, and shiny gear at your fingertips? We dig into the surprising reason progress stalls for so many players: overload. From preset chasing to YouTube grazing, we unpack six traps that quietly drain your focus and lay out a practical framework to turn short, daily sessions into real, measurable growth.

We start by calling out the biggest culprits—gear distraction and information bloat—and share simple ways to reduce friction: limit tone-tweaking to a scheduled window, cap your lesson sources, and keep a living “Now, Next, Later” list so today’s work is obvious. Then we build a clear practice structure that fits real life: technique for clean mechanics, fretboard fluency to connect shapes and keys, and repertoire that serves your goals instead of just your playlist. You’ll hear how to choose songs that strengthen the exact skills you’re training, and how just a few constraints can elevate phrasing, dynamics, and time feel.

We also talk about protecting depth by shutting down device distractions and using focused, intentional minutes. The “new thing trap” gets a spotlight too—why that fresh lick feels amazing at first and how to balance it with review so older gains do not fade. By the end, you’ll have three anchors to guide every session: clarity about what you want, structure that turns goals into drills, and consistency that compounds, even when you only have 15 minutes.

If you’re ready to trade scattered effort for steady progress, hit play, build your plan, and start seeing movement in your hands and ears. Subscribe, share this with a guitarist who needs focus, and leave a review to tell us the one change you’ll make this week.

Thanks for being here!! I will continue to do my best to bring you the best, most informative guitar discussions to help you along your guitar journey!

The more you share this podcast with others, the more I can continue to grow this channel and offer the best information and advice I can to you.
Thank you!
Steve

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus... 
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0... 
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... . 

Transcript

Gear Distraction And Preset Chasing

YouTube Grazing Vs Mastery

Drowning In Study Materials

Practice With Intention And A Plan

Device Distractions And Focused Time

The New Thing Trap And Balance

Clarity, Structure, Consistency

Invitation To Guitar Zoom Academy

Steve 0:35

You know, the biggest problem that most guitar players have today isn't a lack of information. It's actually too much information. You know, we live in this world where we have everything at our fingertips instantly, you know, from videos to choruses to, you know, gear, all this kind of stuff. And we're losing focus. That's the big thing. We're just running through the motions and just looking for the newest thing and the best thing. And we just keep moving forward. We're not actually focusing on what we need. So what I want to do is break down six things I want you to think about to try and keep yourself organized with your playing. The first one is I'm very guilty of. The first one is what I call gear distraction. Okay. You buy a new piece of gear, maybe you get a new digital amp, right? Um, for me, I bought a Kemper. I, you know, I've always been a tube guy, I've got tube amps, but I bought this Kemper and I was so excited about it and I loved it. And and I sold it, but I loved it until the day I sold it. Here's the problem with it. There was nothing wrong with the Kemper. It was a great piece of gear. The problem was me. I spent way too much time scrolling through it, looking for presets, you know, looking for profiles, all that kind of stuff, messing with tones. I wasn't practicing. So the first thing I want you to be aware of is just that distraction of new stuff, new gear that we get. And then all of a sudden we're spending all this time with it. Maybe it's a new plugin that you get. Um, I'm not saying these things are bad, they're great, but the problem is that if they are distracting us from actually practicing, it's a problem. So that's number one I want you to think about is gear distraction. Number two, we'll call it YouTube overload. Okay. YouTube is an amazing place to learn how to play, to get information on things. Okay. The problem is it's constantly grazing. That's what people do, is they're just grazing. They watch a video and then they watch another video and then they practice it for a little bit and then they watch another video. That's the problem. Okay. You're getting a little bit of a lot of things, but you're not mastering anything. And so what we need to do is we need to be careful with that. Whether it's YouTube, whether it's, you know, a guitar course or a book or whatever it might have, they're all great. And there's amazing teachers out on YouTube. Don't get me wrong. The problem, again, is us. What we're doing is we're just overconsuming the information. Oftentimes we're finding the wrong information. Maybe we come across something, we're like, wow, I would love to be able to do that. I want to be able to do that. Maybe knowing that we're not ready for that yet. There's other steps that we need to work on before we're actually going to be ready for whatever this thing is. But we want to explore it. Now, again, I'm not saying that that's bad. The most important thing is that you're happy. Whatever it is that you're doing, you're enjoying it. But if you're frustrated and you're not getting to where you want to go, that's why I'm having this conversation with you. So the first thing is being careful of new toys. The second thing is being careful of just information overload, okay, especially YouTube watching videos. The third thing is too many study materials. Again, guitar courses, PDFs, books, guitar tabs, songs, apps that you've got on your phone or whatever it might be. Um, there was a time when anytime I came across something on the internet, be it on Instagram or YouTube or something like that, I would save the links to everything. I'd be like, oh, I'm gonna come back to that later. Great idea. Until I have about 400 links that I'm never gonna go through all this stuff. It's just too much material. So again, you've got to be careful of that. You got to figure out who are you, where are you trying to go, and what is it that you really need to be focusing on to get to those goals that you have. And so you got to be diligent when it comes to materials, when it comes to YouTube, all those sorts of things. The fourth thing I would say is practicing without a plan. Okay. When you sit down and you grab the guitar and you just start noodling or, you know, you go through the same routine over and over and over. I like to tell people you have three options when it comes to probably anything in life, but certainly with guitar. Option one is maintenance. You want to maintain, you're not getting any better, but you're not getting any worse, right? You're just maintaining. The second thing is actually elevating, getting better at whatever it is that you want to be able to do. And of course, the third thing is backsliding, right? You're not getting better, you're not practicing enough, and you're actually not even maintaining. Okay, that happens a lot when people get frustrated and they put the guitar away for a while, you know, that sort of thing. So you got to be very careful that you're trying to figure out a plan, right? What are you trying to do? What are the things that you need? What techniques do you need to be focusing on? What songs should you be working on that benefit what it is that you're practicing, right? Not just necessarily songs that you like, which is great, but songs that actually serve a purpose and what it is that you're trying to develop for your skills. You've got your visualization of the fretboard, the comprehension of how things connect together and look on the fretboard in various keys, with different scales, whatever it might be. Then you've got theory. How much theory do you need? What theory do you need to be able to, you know, attain the goals that you're interested in? These are the things you need to be thinking about. So when you practice, I always call it practice with intention. When you wake up every day and you're going to practice, know what it is that you need to do, know why it is that you need to do it, and then start getting to work. Now, if you need a new, you know, injection of something interesting or exciting, you know, something to change it up, there are a million ways to approach the same topic or the same idea, but you've got to be creative about it. That's the key. So if you do start getting bored, it's okay to break out of that. As a matter of fact, you kind of have to. Now, there's certain fundamental things, playing a scale or a bar chord or changing chords or learning how to strum. These are things that we have to be able to do. But there's lots of different ways we can approach them to make them easier for you to be able to do or comprehend or whatever it might be. So the point is, number four is you've got to learn to practice and have a plan, have an intention. Okay. Number five, I've got these written down here. Number five, device distractions. Your phone, right? The TV, whatever it might be, answering emails or something dings on your phone and you go and, or whatever it might be, people come over to your house, or again, these things are going to happen. You're going to do these, but when it's time to practice, try as much as you can to put all of these things away. So you can sit and take 100% of your time, your thought process, your focus, if you will, and put it to what you're doing. So instead of always thinking, well, I need to practice more, I need to spend more time, maybe you do. But oftentimes what I find when I talk to potential students is it's not that they necessarily need to practice more. They need to take that 30 minutes or 45 minutes or whatever it is that they have every day and make it meaningful. Focus practice, that's what I call it. Avoid distractions. Focus, practice, and then you practice with intention. What is it that you need to be working on to get from point A to point B to point C to point D and so on? What are some of the things that we need to be able to put on the shelf, at least temporarily, until we get these things developed? Then we can start looking at bringing them back. We have to be responsible about this stuff because if you're just all over the place, it's hard to make progress. Now, again, if you're perfectly happy with being all over the place, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're not, these are things that can help you. Okay? Number six, this is a really important one too that I used to have a problem with. I call it the new thing trap. You learn a new scale or a new exercise or a new technique or a new lick or whatever it might be, and you become hyper-focused on that thing, which is great. But you can't forget about the other things that you need to continually push yourself forward. Okay. Think about it like, you know, this hit of adrenaline, if you will. You've got this new thing and you're super excited about it, and you want to be. That's a great thing to have happen. But you don't want to immerse yourself in that so much to where you start losing everything else that you were working on. You've got to learn to find a balance. You have X amount of time to spend playing guitar, studying, listening, memorizing, whatever these things are. You have X amount of time on a daily basis to do this. Again, it fluctuates. Some days you have a little more, some days you have a little less. But the point is, whatever it is that you're going to work on needs to equal the amount of time that you've got to spend. You can't have 383 things and 20 minutes to do them because it's not going to work. We have to sift through all of this stuff and figure out which are the best things that you should be working on. What are the things that you shouldn't be worrying about, at least right now, until you get these other things developed? We need to make a plan. Okay. So that's the real thing. So if we if we end with this, just think about these three things: clarity in your practice, having an actual structure of what it is that you're trying to do, and then being consistent. I always tell people practice on the days that you eat. Okay. Even if it's for five or 10 or 15 minutes, don't discount that. Don't be an all or nothing kind of person where, you know, I got to practice two hours a day where I'm not going to practice at all. That's a terrible attitude. Okay. Yes, I want you to practice two hours a day if you've got the time. But some days you only have 20 minutes, some days you only have 30 minutes. Make it count. Be focused and know what it is you're doing and why. Okay? So, anyway, take care, stay positive, keep practicing. And if you do need some sort of help with getting yourself organized, you know, finally achieving these things that you want to be able to do, all you need to do is there's going to be a link somewhere around here that you can click on to learn more about the Guitar Zoom Academy. Be as transparent as I can about how it works and what it is and how much it costs and all those sorts of things, and see if it's something that would actually fit you. And then we would have a conversation and just, you know, suss out anything to see if this is something that would really work for you. So anyway, take care and keep practicing. All right.