I have been playing for a few years after starting with Josh’s course. I like to learn songs by guessing the key. (luckily I can always check my guess on chordify. Then listening and trying to work out the song using my ears and what music theory I know. I find learning from tabs and videos is not fun at all but sometimes when I’m stumped, I resort to them. I spend most of my practice time learning songs. I do not know how to play with a pick or slap. There are so many other things I am working on, theory, ears, rhythm, tone etc that I have not really put much time into these two skills. I have been asked if I could play with a pick a few times but I have never been asked to slap. I do not want to spend time learning stuff that is not that essential. What say you all?
I’m pretty new, and after finishing the course, I decided to start learning the pick, because most of my fav music is played with pick, so now I’m working on learning songs with fingers, and going through the course again with a pick, well and sneakily trying to practice a pick song aswell.
dont have interest in learning slap atm though, but playing the pick is very fun, and challenging in different ways than fingers, specially muting, definitely helps with muting technique while doing finger style, and pick playing sounds great, specially with some drive on it 
but thats off course just my opinion
I definitely say you should give em a try
The main reason most learn how to play bass is to play. So pick your songs put them on a practice list and get cracking. If you always “learning” you are always a student, if you’re always playing, you are always a player.
The hardest thing is to get started but once you are rolling it’s quite unstoppable.
If you’re playing for yourself, learn whatever gets you excited to pick up your instrument and keep playing it. If you’re in a band / playing with others, you’ll need to balance that with learning the skills to play the material that the group decides on. If there are songs that require a pick, may not be a bad idea to learn to play with a pick. That said it’s easier to play fast with a pick, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to play faster basslines fingerstyle. A good reason to learn pick style is the bright percussive tone that the pick makes. Not necessarily speed.
Some of us actually prefer playing with a pick or slapping. I’m at least 90% pick these days, probably more.
What’s important to learn depends entirely on your own interests, not what other people think is important.
If you want to play live, do it! If you don’t, don’t. There is absolutely no reason to play live if you don’t want to. Same goes for slapping, picking, tapping, and any other technique. Some things will sound better with them or wrong if you substitute other techniques, and all that matters is if that interest you or not.
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to figure out what your goals actually are, and work backwards from that.
None of it is essential.
I’ll echo what others have said, and that I find pick playing a very useful, valuable, and rewarding skill. I make lots of use of it. It opens up lots of tone options. I especially love palm muting (with pick or fingers) and getting the contrast between that and heavy strumming.
If you do start learning pick, be patient. It is a completely different skill. It took dozens or hundreds of hours to get to where you are finger-style. If it takes 1/4 the time to reach the same level with a pick, that is still a LOT of time and practice.