Day 1 done - but only half - i misunderstood the instructions but I think i get it now : do everything ascending followed immediately by a return run descending = 6 exercises ( three patterns starting with downstroke : three patterns starting with upstroke - each pattern played on each string twice then move to the next string do everything descending followed immediately by a return run ascending = 6 exercises - ( three patterns starting with downstroke : three patterns starting with upstroke) each pattern played on each string twice then move to the next string. this second section was the part i missed yesterday.

@Jon Bjork Thanks, Jon. I don't want to post anymore. I would rather shut up and practice. I'm sorry if I was putting wrong info out there.😆

Done with days 21 - 25, five days left. I'm kind of sorry it's coming to an end!

Days 26 - 30 done. So glad to have completed the challenge! Now that this is more like a habit, I think I'll go another 30 days just to see where it takes me.

It's funny because when I first started getting into heavy metal music and guitar playing, I wasn't into most of the 80's bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest because they didn't seem aggressive enough like Slayer or Testament. I felt like listening to some of the more popular/easier-to-listen-to bands was just joining the status quo and I wasn't about that. As a teenager, the music was mostly about aggression. As I learned how to play over the years, I have gained a much better appreciation for many 80's bands and love them to death these days. I think I have a nostalgic kind of sentimental thing going on now for bands like Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourn (R.I.P.), Judas Priest and so forth. Anyway, I feel like I have all the makings of an 80's music nerd at this point even if I was a bit rebellious early on. And don't get me started with the Atari games. Lately, the Psychedelic Furs have been running through my head a lot.

I have found that analyzing my technique or just the way I am phrasing my notes when I practice repetitively carries over into other areas of my life. I am a part-time cook as my occupation and kind of just beginning. So, like with my knife skills i can see similarities between this and getting faster with picking. It's kind of like, one day I'm chopping vegetables slowly for accuracy and also for safety. One cut at a time. A few months later I am chopping the same vegetables but at a faster rhythm - maybe doing a couple cuts quickly in succession every now and then. It's always a gradual process where speed has to come naturally. The big difference here is: you can get away with pushing your speed with guitar playing, but as I have found, a chef's knife is much less forgiving if you make a mistake. Picking seems to be much like learning to cut vegetable quickly. For example, I've been working on downstrokes - a triplet pattern, trying to get in my repetitions. Over a few months it's the same thing - maybe one day I'm picking at a rhythm a little faster than before but with less effort than previously. It isn't much different for the fretting hand either as far as I can tell. One thing that i learned from reading is that there was a golfer at one point, and i can't remember his name right now, but apparently, he had broken his game down into measurable segments or units. Each day he would systematically work on each part of his game - breaking everything down into separate skills/movements and so forth. This helped him win a lot of games and championships. Anyway, my point of bringing this up is that I do this sometimes with riffs, either ones I make up or riffs from songs that I'm trying to learn and execute. A riff may have 20 notes total and sometimes I will break into 5 or 6 note segments and just practice those 5 or 6 notes before moving onto another part of the riff. I have had some success with this but have not used this practice technique enough to say whether i think it's highly effective or not. To sum up, basically, i think there is a tremendous amount of skill transfer when it comes to playing guitar - not just within guitar playing itself but when you apply what you learn in other areas.

I like to learn and mess around with software development as well as play a lot of retro games. I currently use and app called codecademy to get more practice with object-oriented programming languages like C++ and Java. I have fun with it. I just purchased a game stick from amazon with over 20,000 retro-games. I'm still trying to fit that in with everything else. Outside of work between trying to improve as a guitar player and stay engaged in my other hobbies, I tend to stay busy most of the time. I sometimes wish sleep was optional.

@Jon Bjork Amazon.com: Retro Game Console, Plug and Play Video Game Console Built in 20000+ Games,9 Classic Emulators, 4K High Definition HDMI Output for TV with Dual Controllers : Video Games