What's Your Opinion On Changing Things?, Do arbitrary changes help your playing? Options

[TheKeplerConject...]

Hey Guys,

I'm looking for people's opinion on something. At various points in my guitar-playing-life, I've made conscious decisions to change things about my playing.

First, it was how I held the guitar while sitting - Before, I held it the more typical way, with the guitar resting on my right leg. I decided to try placing it on my left leg with the body resting between my legs when I friend who's a better player recommended it when I joined a band and needed to adapt to playing while standing.

Next, It was removing my right hand pinky from the body of the guitar while playing.

Then it was the picks I used - I went with black Jazz IIIs. Smaller than what I was used to.

Most recently it was playing with my picking hand in a loose fist (inspired by Mr. David Wallimann). Previously my unused fingers (2, 3 & 4) were fanned out.

After each of these changes I experienced relatively major and fast improvement in speed and accuracy. Initially, it's like playing the instrument for the first time again. But after about a week, I'm playing better than before and I can barely believe that I ever felt comfortable with the previous approach.

I'm thinking that, while fighting my way through the newly introduced discomfort, I'm building a momentum towards my my goal (wherever I was before making the change). When I get to that goal, I just keep improving for a few days - past my previous level. Then it goes back to normal: I, again, need to practice a technique for a few weeks before being able to kick up the tempo by 5bpm.

I'm now toying with the idea of making some unnecessary change to make that happen again. But I have questions. Is this happening simply because I'm making changes that are, in fact, better then my previous approaches? Do you think it's psychological? Has anybody else experienced this? Please let me know your opinion. Thanks!

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