Mannoroth
+1 Great post and lots of very useful tips and comments.
Deciding what to work on in our mostly limited practice time can be very overwhelming... I think its something that a lot of people struggle with.
Reflecting back 2011 was a year of great progress for me guitarwise ?
What worked for me was to join a band and have consistent weekly rehearsal sessions with them. Together we identified which technical areas are more important for playing the type of music we want to play. For example, playing tight chugging rhythms in odd times was more important than sweep picking, tapping and insane shredding. Subsequently I focused my practice routine on developing these areas.
Of course, it is important to keep expanding your repertoire, skills and creativity - John Petrucci advises in one of his books that one should set goals of what you want to become as a guitarist and structure your practice sessions according to those goals.
