I would tell those people the good pots weren’t the first ones, they were the last ones. Which suggests smashing the poorly built prototype and starting over.

I would tell those people the good pots weren’t the first ones, they were the last ones. Which suggests smashing the poorly built prototype and starting over. In other words I read it as an elaboration on “practice makes perfect.” Or, there’s no substitute for experience. (100% true in my... er, experience, across several different fields.) One of the first pieces of advice I got in my career was about a study on expertise. (Wish I had a reference.) The authors wanted to know what made the experts different from the non-experts. You know what the difference was? Reps. That’s it. Now, as someone who has taught a technical, challenging, and all-encompassing field—by which I mean a field that covers not just a knowledge domain but also psychomotor skills and personal values—I can tell you that some people do bring more natural ability at the start. But even those folks don’t achieve mastery without the reps.