Reddit reviews The Guitar Grimoire: The Exercise Book

By the way, get the guitar grimoire green book. It helped me.
The Guitar Grimoire: The Exercise Book https://www.amazon.com/dp/0825835658/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_hzu2CbQSMXP45

The point of using a metronome is to force yourself to play every note of something in a specific rhythmic pattern at an adjustable speed. That way you can master a low speed and then slowly increase it until you achieve shredding mastery.

I would say what makes my daily metronome workout fun is the result. It's not supposed to be your favorite thing to do; it's supposed to be hard. Why would you practice something that's easy? It's kinda like going to the gym; you have to love 'working out'.

I generally do the 30/30 to keep myself moving along; 30 minutes of practicing, 30 minutes of playing. You need to have a regimen, otherwise its easy (at least for me) to fall into the "noodler" camp.

If you're just practicing scales, you should be doing a bit more. Although I don't use it, I think the Guitar Grimoire Exercise Book might be what you need. I have a copy and noticed a bunch of cool exercises in there that are similar to my current rotation. It's not just scales you want to be practicing, but stretches or playing on only two separated strings or only moving up the neck on one string or walking the entire chromatic scale... It sounds like you're doing that already, but the book will focus your efforts. Pick an exercise, start at a low BPM, and work on it every Monday, or something, slowly increasing the speed. Within a couple months, it'll be natural.

A lot of people lose interest at this point in playing. I really must encourage you to stick with this. You need to force yourself to do these "annoying" practice routines in order to convince yourself of their worth. I wish you luck sir/ma'am and hope you stick with it!

Edit: I also like nerdor257's approach. Focus on the little things.

Not familiar with it, but it looks like a very good introductory outline of all the basics you'll need to learn. It also appears to be very well received, so I think your twenty bucks will be well spent. For additional insight into picking, intervals, and finger exercises, I am a very big fan of the Guitar Grimoire series (in particular this book to start)

I use this book and a metronome to practice and work on technique, then I jam out with a looper and/or drum machine to loosen up and try to work on melodic phrasing

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Grimoire-Exercise-Book/dp/0825835658/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418131422&sr=8-2-fkmr1&keywords=guitar+grimoire+practice

this will change your life. trust me.