Sometimes my concentration skills are terrible

I agree about pushing through and messing up muscle memory. That is the main reason why I stop. Over the years I have learned to place an extremely high value on the "figuring it out" phase so I do it correctly for how I play. If I don't do it properly then there will be a point somewhere down the line, usually when trying to execute it faster than I learned it, that the technique doesn't work and I'll have to work it out and do it a different way. That means unlearning how I did it the first time and relearning it so I can do it right. That's a LOT harder than doing it correctly the first time. It takes me considerably longer than twice as long to do that. What I mean by "correctly" is that I'm doing it so it suits my style and technique. That definition can vary from person to person but there are some generalities that apply to most people.

The "Not enough microphones" comment literally cracked me up.  I actually unloaded one recently.  That's a rarity for me.  I traded it for more recording gear so I guess it wasn't totally out of character for me.

I know this. But with me it's more about building guitars. When my concentration is not high there are certain things I just don't undertake on the workbench.

I've never been able to concentrate on anything unless the crap is hitting the fan; that gets my full attention.  Never been diagnosed with ADHD, but I guarantee I have it. 

Even when I was a wee Peegoo in school, I never could grasp the concept of "study."  My brain would not focus no matter what I tried, so I never learned how to study.  Yet somehow I still got good grades.

Lately I seem to focus better when a musical deadline is looming, usually some hard technical passages when I play with the symphony.

I try to keep my chops "limber" by practicing four/five times per week, one hour sessions doing scales/arpeggios/articulations/using a metronome, just in case I get a last-minute call for a gig...

I didn't always know how to practice. I had played for 35 years before I really learned how to do it effectively. Before that it was just figuring stuff out off recordings, endless noodling, and playing in bands. I would go to concerts as a young ninworks and see my favorite guitar player performing the same stuff I had learned off the records. I was the kid in the 4th row with binoculars focused on the guitar player's fingers.

I stumbeld across a monster of a shredder guitarist in my guitar tech's shop, who was about 17 years younger than me, in about 2004 and was blown away. I asked him if he took students and he did so I took about 8 lessons from him over the course of about a year. I video'd them so I could watch and remember everything in the lessons. He taught me how to practice and figure out how to do it in a way so I could learn to execute things I didn't have the ability to do. That in itself was well worth the cost of admission. He also gave me some guidance to overcome some bad techniques I had from being self-taught and not figuring them out correctly on my own. He also encouraged me to do things a bit differently from people who don't have fingers the width of a DC-10. I had to adjust my playing technique to work with my oversized fingers but was always trying to find ways to play what everyone else was doing. He let me know it was okay to leave that stuff to everyone else and focus on what I could do instead of what I couldn't and develop that to its full potential. That was huge. I became a much better guitarist because of those insights.

My biggest struggle these days has been to find the time to practice but that should change over the winter months since the biggest time vampire of keeping up with the yard work won't be there.

Here's my reply in "novel" format. 

I was very fortunate to find my "teacher."  He knew I was far from a beginner at the start because he had heard me play at the guitar tech's shop.  At first I came to him with some specific goals.  I wanted to learn how to sweep pick.  I was primarily an economy picker so I also wanted to learn how to alternate pick better.  I didn't need any theory instruction because I knew it as well as he did.  That helped us communicate at a high level and streamlined the instruction process considerably.

After I had some guidance with those two items I expanded my 'wants' list to include remedying some of my technical problems from being self taught.  I once came to him complaining about how my hands tired quickly when practicing.  He looked at how I was holding my hands and my posture, and made some priceless suggestions that fixed my issues.

I think he was basically a self-taught guitarist with just an amazing level of talent but I wouldn't be surprised if he had some technical instruction along the way.  He obviosly had some theory training but I'm not clear on how he acquired it.  I think he may have gotten some of his technical skills from watching Paul Gilbert instructional videos.  He used a lot of the same descriptions that I recognized when he would show me things.  I have great musical ears so figuring things out from recordings was easy for me.  I didn't need any help with that.  He also offered transcription services or would just jam if that's what you wanted.  I didn't need the scale practices other than he helped me find other ways to execute what I already and expand on that.  He helped me with playing arpeggios.  That's something I wasn't great at but I recognized the need to do it better so we spent some time working on that.

He would show me how to expand things I already knew in a way that worked with my oversized fingers and hands.  He had a couple specifics but most of it was conceptual and different from how I typically approached things.  Basically just looking at things from a different angle and thinking outside of the box (not the fingering position boxes but the musical approach ones).  Since I already knew the fingerboard backward and forward we were able to focus the instruction on specific things and didn't have to spend any time on the basics.  Most of my issues were picking techniques.  He was very generous.  He told me he would be more than happy to show me anything he knew at any time.  He once told me I was the only student he ever had with such focused and particular areas I wanted to learn or improve on.  I took that as a compliment.  I'm not sure I would have gotten that level of pinpointed help if I hadn't been so specific.

Unfortunately, he died of complications from diabetes about 6 years ago.  Long after I had stopped taking instruction from him.  We had become good friends and had a lot of respect for each other's abilities.  He told me many times that I didn't need lessons but I knew better.

I practice in headphones most of the time.  The only times I don't is when Mrs. Ninworks isn't home and that's not very often. 

I already knew how to use a metronome from my piano lesson days as a kid but seldom used one.  After meeting him that changed.  I still use one extensively and my sense of time has improved one hundred fold.  I discovered many different ways to use a metronome to help stifle the boredom that can come from playing repetitive exercises with one for extended periods of time like playing on the up-beat of the click instead of the down-beat, starting on beat 2 or 3 or 4 of a phrase and continuing that way for awhile as well as starting on the up-beat of 2, 3, or 4.  I always mix it up to help keep my concentration.  If it keeps changing then I have to pay attention to what I'm doing but, there are times when my head just isn't in it and remaining focused is impossible.  That's when I take a break.

I also practice scales and arpeggios using dynamics and accents to break up the boredom.  For example, picking softly, picking at a regular velocity, picking hard, using crescendos and decrescendos. accenting particular beats, or off-beats, in the measure and changing that up using different ones, legato, stacatto, etc. etc.  One method I use when developing a complicated exercise is to play it very stacatto and very lightly.  I don't know what it is about doing it that way but it is very effective for me.  

He taught me how to practice and develop long, fast-moving, passages by breaking them up into smaller sections and then keep adding onto them a few notes at a time until the entire thing was playable.  That was eye-opening.  It's something I had realized at a gut-level but had never put into practice.  Him pointing it out was priceless.

Having a plan was definitely the right thing for me.  I was able to target areas I knew I had problems with and work on specific remedies.

I keep tabs on my progress but don't have a log book.  However, I do have a guitar practicing program I use to make up and store exercises with.  It allows me to keep track of my progress by storing the exercises and the tempos I have been working on them at.  I have literally hundreds of exercises I have made up over the years to work on specific technical areas I need or needed to work on.  Every now and then I will go back and review ones that I had gotten as far as I thought I needed to and moved on to others.  That has been extremely helpful.

I don't believe there really is a way to 'cheat.' If one has physical limitations be it small or large hands, fat, skinny, or oddly shaped fingers etc, there is likely a way to execute particular techniques that may be different from the conventional way of doing it. If one is 'lanking' their way through something then IMO it's because of their commitment to playing or their limited experience and/or ability to figure out how to do it. My instructor helped me to realize I don't have to be able to play everything everyone else does in the same way they do.  There may be some things that one just can't do for physical reasons.  Sometimes it takes someone else to point that out if you can't realize it yourself.  My teacher helped me with that.  My thoughts on that now are that if I absolutely cannot execute something in the way ________ (your favorite guitarist) does it then find at least 2 other ways to do something different that will work in the same situation.

I have most certainly had to modify my approach to playing due to my large hands, fat and short fingers but that can be a blessing as well as a curse. Chords with open strings in the lower end of the neck are my kryptonite. My banana fingers just don't work well on the narrow part of the neck unless it's a nylon string classical or the neck has an extra wide nut width. If it's necessary for me to play something with open strings, I have a guitar that's strung with heavier gauge strings I can tune to either a C or D standard tuning. I use a capo to get up the neck a ways where it is wider to give me extra real estate for my fat fingers to operate in.

I have very short thumbs so fretting notes over the top of neck is practically impossible for me. I can do it sometimes but that is very dependent upon what is going on with the other fingers and what strings they are manipulating. That's something I seldom even attempt because it doesn't work for me almost all of the time.

I play lots of chords that have notes on two adjacent strings in the same fret with the tip of one finger out of necessity. I learned at a young age that if I don't there is no way to fit two fingers into that space and get the notes to speak. That's the curse part. The blessing part is that it frees up a finger, usually my pinky, to do other things that many people can't do.

I have also had to learn to use my pinky finger extensively out of necessity. It is the smallest of my fingers so it gets used in situations that can make chord fingerings look very strange but I get it done. Using it so much has made that finger have the ability to do as many things as well as all the others. I can do insane vibrato stuff with it as well.

Having fat fingers has also taught me to use less notes in my chord voicings. That was an unexpected benefit that taught me how to voice chords using notes that fit in and around other instruments and vocals to stay out of their frequency ranges and not cover them up. That's priceless when making up guitar parts for songs and fitting them into existing arrangements when recording.

I can agree with your points with exclusions. I don't necessarily think it's cheating as much as it is either lack of experience or training or ego. Many people grip the neck like a shovel and get by with it. There is a time and place for that but it shouldn't be your default hand position. I learned to be a thumb-behind-the-neck player early on but still use the shovel grip when doing large bends and vibratos. It wasn't something I was shown how to do but I think I just figured it out because it made certain things easier to play. It's been so long ago that I really don't remember how I found it. I may have seen someone else do it and tried it out. I dunno. I have even seen seasoned players use that grip and insist that's how it should be done. OK, that's fine but I'd like to see you play Flight Of The Bumblebee all the way through using that hand position. Even if they could execute it I don't think they'd get all the way through due to fatigue. Many players have no aspirations of playing at that level and that's fine for them but don't tell me their way is the only way it should be done. I know better. In my younger and chickenier days anytime someone would tell me I was doing it wrong I was hard-headed enough to tell them they were wrong.

I started playing when I was 10 so my hands weren't big then. As I got older I realized I had to modify my grip and fingering just to be able to play. I know HOW to do it like everyone else I just don't a lot of the time out of necessity.

Carpal Tunnel caught up with me in my late 40's in both wrists and required surgery to repair them. I used to beat the crap out of my guitars. I think it was from practicing without and amp on a solid body guitar when I was growing up due to family pressures about making too much noise with the amp. I hammered it just so I could hear it. I was in the no-pain-no-gain camp because that's what I had always heard. Now I know better. It's funny how I never break strings anymore. I used to do it all the time.