The Skill Everyone Ignores: Taste

Most people think taste is some mystical instinct certain people are born with.
But if you look closely, taste is just the ability to notice what most people overlook, and then act on it.

Everyone consumes. Very few pay attention.

Taste is the difference between hearing a song and knowing why it works.
Between reading a book and catching the one sentence that took the author ten years to write.
Between scrolling and stopping.

If talent is “ability,” taste is “awareness.”
The reason taste matters is brutally simple: you can’t create anything better than what you notice.
Your ceiling rises or falls based on the quality of things your attention absorbs.

It’s unfortunate, but most people never refine their taste because they mistake familiarity for quality.
They keep returning to the same creators, the same genres, the same comfortable aesthetics.
They never stretch their senses, so their work all resembles the same grey mush.

Taste isn’t a personality trait. It’s a training regimen.

Here’s the real mechanism:

You don’t develop good taste by consuming “good things.”
You need bad things too, the cheap stuff, the cringe, the clumsy attempts.
They give you edges, boundaries, a map of what not to do.
Without contrast, everything blends together; you lose discrimination.

People assume taste is built by watching a lot, reading a lot, listening a lot.
Not true.
Taste develops when you engage, pause, rewind, dissect, compare.
You shouldn’t just listen to the beat; you should hunt for the moment the snare hits differently.
You shouldn’t just admire a paragraph; you should ask what word ruins it if you remove it.

A refined taste is sharp, and sharp things cut.
If your taste hasn’t made you walk away from a trend everyone loves, you don’t have one, you’re just borrowing someone else’s.
Taste requires the confidence to say “this looks polished but empty,” even if the world is applauding.

But the useful part comes here:

At first, it just helps you avoid mediocrity.
Then, you start seeing patterns.
Then, you start predicting where things should go.
And eventually, you create something that feels inevitable, the kind of thing people call “original,” even though it’s just the product of paying closer attention than everyone else.

Most people try to create without taste, which is like trying to speak without having listened.

If you want an unfair advantage, start refining what you feed your senses.
Treat your attention like a lens that needs polishing.
Collect things that make your brain sit up straight.
Reject things that feel like noise.
Compare obsessively.
Notice aggressively.

Talent helps you execute.
Taste is what tells you what’s worth executing in the first place.

And almost everyone ignores it.

Before You Scroll: If you want to support this newsletter, checking out the ad below helps more than you think. And honestly, it’s actually a solid tool.

Upgrade your organization training with engaging, interactive video content powered by Guidde.

Here’s what you’ll love about it:

1️⃣ Fast & Simple Creation: AI transforms text into video in moments.
2️⃣ Easily Editable: Update videos as fast as your processes evolve.
3️⃣ Language-Ready: Reach every learner with guides in their native tongue.

Bring your training materials to life.

The best part? The browser extension is 100% free.

Check out Guidde

See you on the next stair,
Alastair