"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well"
About this Quote
The subtext is rehearsal-room truth. Nobody arrives with clean timing, confident breath control, or instinctive stage presence. You get there through clumsy scales, half-finished demos, missed cues, and the humiliating playback of your own early takes. Calling that “worth doing poorly” reframes failure as tuition rather than evidence you don’t belong. It’s also a quiet rebuke to gatekeeping in creative culture, where “natural talent” gets mythologized and beginners are expected to either arrive polished or disappear.
What makes the phrasing work is the paradox: it hijacks a familiar moralism (“anything worth doing...”) and flips the ending into permission. The word “until” is the whole engine. It insists that “poorly” isn’t the destination; it’s the necessary bridge to competence. In an era of highlight reels and instant critique, Brown is defending the unsexy middle: the reps, the drafts, the messy practice that doesn’t photograph well but builds the only kind of confidence that lasts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Brown, Steve. (2026, January 15). Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/anything-worth-doing-is-worth-doing-poorly-until-96393/
Chicago Style
Brown, Steve. "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/anything-worth-doing-is-worth-doing-poorly-until-96393/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/anything-worth-doing-is-worth-doing-poorly-until-96393/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.













