It's through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good. — Paula Scher
—What lingers after this line?
Failure as the Starting Point
Paula Scher’s quote begins with a blunt but liberating truth: growth rarely arrives through flawless performance. Instead, it emerges through error, discomfort, and repeated correction. By saying that you must ‘get bad in order to get good,’ she reframes mistakes not as proof of inadequacy but as the raw material of mastery. From this perspective, failure becomes less of a verdict and more of a stage. What feels like falling short is often the necessary beginning of learning, because without visible missteps, there is little to examine, refine, or improve.
The Logic of Practice
Seen more closely, Scher’s insight matches how skill actually develops in the real world. Whether someone is learning typography, piano, public speaking, or programming, early attempts are usually uneven. That awkwardness is not accidental; rather, it reveals that the learner is stretching beyond what is already comfortable. In this way, bad work serves a purpose. It exposes weak instincts, technical gaps, and habits that polished success can hide. As educational theorist Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner (1983) suggests, professionals improve by reflecting on action, especially when outcomes are imperfect.
Creative Work Requires Risk
This idea becomes especially powerful in creative fields, where originality often demands experimentation. Paula Scher herself, known for bold graphic design work for Pentagram, built a career on trying ideas that could have failed before they succeeded. In creative practice, playing it safe may protect the ego, but it often prevents discovery. Consequently, mistakes are not merely tolerated; they are often signs of genuine exploration. Picasso’s long stylistic evolution, for example, shows that artistic breakthroughs rarely come from repeating what already works. They come from pushing into uncertain territory, where failure is always possible.
A Psychological Shift in Self-Judgment
Just as important, the quote challenges the shame people attach to being inexperienced. Many learners assume that being bad at something means they lack talent, yet Scher suggests the opposite: poor early performance may simply mean the process is underway. This shift matters because harsh self-judgment often stops progress before improvement has time to appear. Psychologist Carol Dweck’s research in Mindset (2006) similarly argues that people grow more effectively when they treat ability as developable rather than fixed. Once mistakes are seen as evidence of effort rather than deficiency, persistence becomes easier and learning becomes more resilient.
Mastery Built Through Revision
From there, growth can be understood as a cycle of attempt, error, feedback, and adjustment. Rarely does excellence appear in a first draft; instead, it is assembled through revision. Writers cut weak sentences, athletes correct form, and designers revise layouts precisely because initial versions are incomplete. Therefore, getting good is less about avoiding bad outcomes than about responding well to them. The people who improve most are often not the ones who fail least, but the ones who learn most intelligently from what went wrong.
The Courage to Continue
Ultimately, Scher’s statement is an argument for courage. To accept being bad at first is to accept vulnerability, public imperfection, and slow progress. Yet this humility is what opens the door to real competence, because every expert has passed through a stage that looked unimpressive from the outside. In the end, the quote offers both realism and encouragement: mistakes are not detours from growth but the road itself. Once that is understood, failure loses some of its sting and becomes what it has always been—a necessary companion to becoming better.
Recommended Reading
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
One-minute reflection
What feeling does this quote bring up for you?
Related Quotes
6 selectedTo do anything truly well, you must be willing to be bad at it for a while. Growth is an accumulation of small, deliberate efforts. — Brené Brown
Brené Brown
At its core, Brené Brown’s insight dismantles the fantasy of instant mastery. To do something truly well, we must first accept awkwardness, mistakes, and visible imperfection.
Read full interpretation →Resilience is not just enduring the storm; it is learning to harvest the rain to nourish the roots you've already planted. — Elizabeth Edwards
Elizabeth Edwards
At first glance, Elizabeth Edwards rejects the common image of resilience as simple endurance. To ‘endure the storm’ suggests gritting one’s teeth and waiting for suffering to pass, yet her metaphor quickly moves further...
Read full interpretation →If you never let yourself struggle, you never let yourself grow strong. Resilience is not the absence of difficulty; it is the integration of it. — Annie Wright
Annie Wright
At its core, Annie Wright’s quote argues that strength is not formed in comfort but in contact with resistance. If a person is never tested, their capacities remain largely theoretical, much like an unused muscle that ne...
Read full interpretation →The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity. It is not daily increase, but daily decrease. — Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee’s line reframes growth in a surprising way: the highest form of development does not appear as accumulation, but as refinement. At first glance, cultivation sounds like adding skills, habits, and knowledge.
Read full interpretation →A garden is not made in a year; it is never made in the sense of finality. It grows, and with the labor of love should go on growing. — Frederick Eden
Frederick Eden
Frederick Eden begins by rejecting the idea that a garden can ever be finished. At first, this sounds like a practical observation about plants, seasons, and weather; yet it quickly becomes something larger.
Read full interpretation →If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. — Liberty Bailey
Liberty Bailey
Liberty Bailey’s remark turns growth into an act of careful perception rather than mere intervention. At first glance, it sounds like practical advice for gardeners, and indeed Bailey—an influential horticulturist—meant...
Read full interpretation →More From Author
More from Paula Scher →