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I'm having trouble with this. I get up 2 hours before leaving for work but I spend an hour and a half drinking coffee and watching guitar building videos. I don't know if it's a sign of getting old or just plain laziness. The videos are great and I usually learn something but my build is going way to slow. So I need to break this habit starting tomorrow. Wish me luck.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Paralysis by analysis. It happens to everyone at some point. You get hung up on learning and planning, then you find it hard to just start. Pick an operation that you feel like you have a good enough handle on and force yourself to start it. Remember that even if you totally mess it up, you can just start over. Usually, when you finally get started (with anything related to the project) and have a bit of success it starts to roll and you find all of the videos you've been watching start to fall into place.

Good luck.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Could be age too. Takes me a lot longer to get rolling in the AM than it used to.

One thing though, ditch watching videos in the AM altogether. It puts your brain into passive mode.

Beyond that, remember the story of the shoemakers helpers. Set yourself up for the morning the night before. Have a clear plan of exactly the job you plan to do, have it set up ready to go. Plan jobs that are easily accomplished all the way in the timeframe you have.

I used to get up 2hrs early before work as well. Pretty doable to get a rosette in or bend a set of sides, get some purflings glued to bindings, etc., all to serve the specific larger task of what you want to do that night. If you can get 1.5 used hrs before work each workday, that's 7.5 hrs extra per week, basically a full work day. It adds up fast. Save watching videos for the end of the day when it's time to rest.

I used to really enjoy that time, I found it helped me claim the day as my own, and made it easier to head off to work, having already done something of my own for myself.

Watch this to the end re: The Couch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq_5UQry3T4

I think videos are good at giving you the big picture, but when it comes to details about how to do something in particular, they can be a bit maddening. Books are better for feeding you details as you need them. It is often hard to pinpoint just where in a video you saw a certain piece of critical information, but you can find it pretty fast in a book. Just my view of things.

I can't, I swore off YouTube!

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I stayed off the couch today and had my coffee by the window looking over the pond. 20 minutes later I'm in the shop and I got the herringbone backstrip into one back. I'm all setup to do the next one and that should go quicker tomorrow morning.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Bit by bit!

I’m reading this sitting on the couch. Way better than routing binding channels. I mean... right? The couch is soooo comfy and the router so loud!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

When I'm sitting on the couch I have a guitar in my hands.