"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well"
About this Quote
Perfectionism is a glamorous form of procrastination, and Steve Brown’s line calls it out with a musician’s pragmatism. “Anything worth doing” nods to ambition and taste - the stuff that makes you pick up a guitar, open a laptop, start a band. Then the quote deliberately yanks the halo off mastery: you don’t earn the right to do the thing by already being good at it. You earn it by being willing to sound bad, look awkward, and keep going anyway.
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.
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 |
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