Just like with any technique, it’s awkward and hard until it isn’t. I plucked for more than 6 months before seriously picking up a pick - and I missed strings and messed up basic lines with a pick that I could do no problem with my fingers. I found having to manage a little piece of plastic between my fingers very strange.
I wouldn’t really say one is harder than the other. Just depends where you start and where you want to go.
Just as a quick simple example of how using 2 hands at once sort of momentarily breaks your brain, consider the follow. You can point your 2 index fingers at eachother, and twirl them around eachother, right? Sure, everyone can. Now, try to do it with your 2 index fingers going in opposite directions!
Such as patting your head with one hand, while rubbing your tummy with the other? 
The Beginner to Badass course teaches using two fingers for plucking, not four, and I think two is what most bassists use. Still, if using your fingers to pluck is giving you confusion as you learn, then try the pick. Carol Kaye (who started with guitar, and became a reknowned studio bass player) uses a pick on bass.
With all due respect, I agree to disagree, Howard.
I realize that much can be done with a pick, but I believe far more can be done dynamically and arguably faster and more agilely with plucking.
However, mileage invariably varies. We each have our individual experiences (whether by playing or hearing others play) and expressions (we either play or appreciate in others’ playing) that guide and form our considered opinions.
For example, I’ve seen Stanley Clarke in concert. What that virtuoso did with his plucking fingers defied what any human could conceivably accomplish with Thor’s own pick.
Speaking strictly personally, I’ve played guitar with a pick and fingerstyle for decades. I also played bass in a band when all I knew how to use was a pick. Interesting to me was that my fingerstyle guitar playing was more expressive and interesting than anything I ever achieved with a pick. Now, I realize this is strictly subjective and a survey sample of one, but it affected how I view “open hand,” non-pick playing.
That said, YMMV.
There are many, many things in daily life that require hands and fingers to operate independently. Typing on a keyboard is a super-common example. Driving a car - manipulating steering, turn signals, foot pedals, heat/air conditioning, sound system, phone, mirrors, etc., etc., etc. - is another example.
In short, the human brain is capable of managing innumerable tasks simultaneously. It all begins with acquainting it with the necessary core concepts involved, then SLOWLY and METHODICALLY actualizing and practicing those concepts and methods using your hands, eyes and ears.
It might sound daunting and complicated, but it’s no more difficult than any number of things that you and other humans do, without thinking, daily.
Luckily for us who want to learn to play bass correctly and most efficiently, there is Josh and his amazingly thoughtful, thorough and gentle approach that turns total newbies into badasses.
Just start B2B over again with an open mind. Then absorb the admittedly simple steps Josh lays out in the first several lessons. Following that, work through the rest of the lessons to the best of your ability with the goal of being able to play at least the slow workouts. Faster workouts are worth bonus points, but they too will come, seemingly like magic.
But it’s not magic at all.
It’s working through a process musicians have learned from for hundreds of years.
Resolve to crawl, then walk, then run. When you do, you eventually WILL get where you want to be.
Same as it ever was.
I was going to cite those same examples, but you beat me to it.
My message to the OP is to just keep practicing and learning and practicing some more. It may seem to be an unsurmountable goal right now, but believe me, it can be done, and it will be done if you hang in there.
Yep, it gets easier with a little applied effort. Just have to work through the steps Josh lays out.
I did too. Because @JoshFossgreen was talking about keys and i didn’t understand it. So i asked, and he kindly directed me to what i needed to go back and do again.
There is no shame for me in this-I’m completely new at this.
I didnt even think about typing, your right! I can type pretty fast after 30 years of doing it too
So this is a thing for me. i stink with the pick
I’m using it more often now, and it’s coming along a little. This also applies to my fully sad slap game. I’m learning them on account i think i should be at minimum adequate with all the tools in the box.
They both take time, and lots of it.
Just like when you first learned to play with your fingers. Think how long it took / takes to take your fingers in retrospect. I think we (at least I did) think it’s like adding something “on top of” finger style but it’s really relearning how to play that way ground up. I’ve often thought about repeating the course with a pick.
I find a pick is as complex as fingers. First, you gotta find the right pick. Then you have to learn muting from scratch. I committed to doing pick, and played that way soley for two or three months, and when I went back to also using fingers, it was like riding a bike. Could do it again in no time.
I would have been happy only using a pick, I have issues with my middle finger which can only be addressed through surgery, but one of the bass players I emulate is Haraguchi-san of Nemophila. I love her stance, how she leans into the bass, how she hold it away when working up the frets, her palm muting, position of her arm.
And how Haraguchi-san uses a pick or fingers depending on the song. She is equally talented with both, and I figured I had to get with the program. And started with fingers again.
Commit to a pick, restarting the course is not a bad idea. It will come faster than you think. Going back and forth between the two, for me, didn’t work until I had proficiency in both. I was frustrated with my lack of skill with a pick, and with the ez out of using fingers, it wasn’t much fun.
Once I committed to the pick, the frustration lessened as it became more a challenge to solve, as I wasn’t comparing it to another method. Now I practice with both methods, first one, than the next, doing the same excersize/song.
You’re going to have a drop off, like anytime you change a fundamental. Like picking up a six string, when I got my six string I restarted the course as it stepped me through stages and became familiar. I have since put it on the back burner as I have focused on other things, but when I come back, I will restart the course again. And play only the six for a while.
hth
I’m comfortable with a pick after many years of playing guitar. Then, 20 years ago,I set out to learn fingerstyle guitar. A completely different ballgame! No way of computing how many 100s of hours of practice I put in, but it was a ton.
So after that, I thought bass plucking would be easy(er). In a macro way, it has been because it does employ using at least two fingers to sound strings. But, while a bass is technically a guitar, the string spacing on it compared to a 6-string guitar is massive. Also, the wrist angle diff between the two instruments is radically different. So, net-net, plucking introduced its own set of new technique challenges, but I dig ‘em. .