I've owned a guitar for six years. I can play maybe six chords and the opening of four songs. By any reasonable measure I have not improved since year two.

For a long time I told myself this was about time. It isn't. I've found twenty minutes most days. The problem is what I do with the twenty minutes.

What I actually do

I pick it up and play the things I can already play.

That's it. That's the whole diagnosis. I play the four openings, I play the six chords in the orders I know, it sounds fine, I feel good, I put it down.

Twenty minutes a day for four years of that is not four years of practice. It's one week of practice, repeated two hundred times.

The thing that makes it hard to fix

Playing what you know feels good. That's the trap. It sounds like music. You finish the session pleased.

Practising the thing you can't do sounds terrible. You're slow, you fumble the change, the chord buzzes. You finish the session worse-sounding than you started. Every honest practice session feels like a step backwards, because in that moment it is one.

So the skill isn't patience exactly. It's a tolerance for sounding bad on purpose, in private, with nobody there to explain to.

Where this shows up elsewhere

I'm aware this isn't really about guitar.

The work I'm good at is pleasant to do. The work I'm bad at is unpleasant in exactly the same specific way — slow, fumbling, visibly worse than my usual output. And I have the same instinct to drift back to the six chords.

What I changed

First ten minutes: something I can't do. F barre chord, mostly, which still sounds like a door closing. Last ten: whatever I want.

Six weeks in. The barre chord now sounds like a door closing slightly more softly. I'm choosing to count that.