It's not a Race, Nerd!
If you've been playing long enough to have had a Mel Bay / Hal Leonard part of your musical life, you know these authors used to be lionized.
Way back when, Ed Friedland, probably the most famous bass book guy, lived in Austin for a while. He has since toured with the Mavericks and moved to Nashville, then Tucson. Great guy. I would say Zen in the sense that he’s super knowledgeable and a bit grumpy and hilarious all at the same time. All based in total mastery of anything stringed bass.
I was fortunate to take lessons with him while he was here-did so for about a year. We went page by page through about half of his Building Walking Bass Lines book. And when I say he would not let me turn the page to the next lesson unless I knew that lesson cold, it was non-negotiable.
It wasn't fun chit-chat and hang-out time. It was: Did you do your work? Let's see. And then let's see if you can get through X.
There's no tab in the book, so you had to read the notes and all kinds of stuff. Hard work, and I have used everything I learned then ever since.
Today, every time I learn a song, I don't go into the next section until I know that section. Same with when I'm charting out a song.
Finish what you're doing, then go to the next one, and eventually you will get to the end. Same with gig prep. Same for everything.
I treat it just like one of those books. I just don't turn the page until I know that page, and then I go to the next one. It just occurred to me as I was practicing this morning and picked up that book. I had not conflated the two, but it really stuck.
There's no reward in jumping ahead.