i, for one, enjoy the repetitive nature of practice... especially the practice of technique. now i'm not saying my technique is awesome, it's quite shit i assure you, but it's getting better. i've been spending months trying to fix all the bad habits i've developed over the past 27 years or so and it's quite the task.

if you're pretty much self-taught as i am, and most bassists/guitarists if i venture a guess, then you've definitely done a good job at teaching yourself to be an impediment to your own playing. i'm not saying you can't be self-taught and have good technique, but i am saying you've probably developed some weird quirks that are doing you no favors. i am certainly no exception.

i'd say about 3 years ago i really started playing with one finger mostly. sure i'd alternate on something, but for pretty much anything that was straight 8's i was using one or the other. i know i was doing it purely for sound consistency rather than any sort of stylistic reason. my fingers sound different and when alternating i couldn't not hear it. so the solution was to just use one or the other. this works. it certainly works on everything that is already in my repertoire, however, it's not scalable.

on certain parts of songs i find my right hand doing some fancy-yet-imprecise movements to make the fingering work for me and i knew that this was hacky at best and had no future, but i still did it anyway. when i finally sat down and decided to get my right hand in order there was some serious humbling going on. focusing on alternating and economy picking to break the habit of using one finger literally broke my brain. while focusing on my right hand playing the simplest major scale managed to smash my ability to play to absolute bits. i literally had to stop and think and say "index" or "middle" each time i made a move because otherwise i'd just start using the 1-finger method. 

this is not knowledge-based. you can't watch a video and "get it". this is straight up re-wiring and what's worse is it's rewiring a 27-year-old mess and there's only one way to do it: slow repetitions. a lot of repetitions. it took me about a week straight to be able to do a 3-note-per-string scale comfortably enough with about 90% success on not slipping into old habits. it wasn't even the major scale because that was too much processing so it just was whatever 3 fingers i could manage and not trip up my right hand. but i'm talking every day and most days it was multiple sessions, some of which were while watching cartoons. 

the feeling of being able to play something that was literally impossible up until recently i wicked cool. the technique will take a long time before i'd call it "natural" but right now it's at the point where playing a line that i've played hundreds of times now has an element of danger. i might not be able to play it smoothly but when i do it's often by a thread and it feels awesome.