Cultivating taste

The most important human quality that deserves more attention.

Cover for Cultivating taste

what is taste?

Imagine taste as a small sophisticated rat inside your brain. It knows a lot more about the world than you do, but it’s not the best at communicating. The problem is, there is only room for one loud voice inside that brain. The rat knows the loud voice inside your head, your consciousness, thinks it’s in control, but it’s not. The rat is the one that continually nudges you into the right direction. Now, instead of pulling your hair or talking directly, it communicates by pulling your brain fibers, by how it makes you feel.

I promise, there are no rats in your brain. But there is something else inside your mind besides the loud conscious voice, something quiet, your subconscious. And it doesn’t communicate using language or words. It communicates by how it feels.1 This is your taste.

The full interaction with taste looks something like this.

You begin by experiencing something. This can be anything: an art piece hanging in a museum, a book you read, a movie you watched, a sentence you wrote, or a PowerPoint slide your intern sent for review.

After experiencing it, you might feel something. A reaction. “This doesn’t feel right” or “this part should be changed somehow”. It’s telling you something is wrong with what you experienced. Your subconscious is connecting that experience to other things you’ve felt in the past. Things that somehow connect or relate to it. The experience resonates with your past experiences.

At first, you’re unsure what the feeling means. Which is why you need a conscious awareness of the feeling. Notice it. This relationship between your consciousness and subconscious must be nurtured. The more you pay attention to the messages you receive, the more you receive. You’ll come to understand and utilize them better. Just focus on feeling and experiencing the thing in the moment. A bit like meditation. The goal is to let the message come out clearly and stop your loud consciousness from interrupting it.

Sometimes the message is a simple “this feels weird”. Occasionally, inspiration strikes, letting out a flood of pent-up subconscious ideas. Sparked by inspiration, you might be tempted to write it down immediately. Not yet. Feel it first. Let it flow. Soak in the moment. You’d be surprised how many great ideas you’ve missed because you wanted to capture one good thought. The moment you give control to the analytical part of your brain, your subconscious quiets down.

Often though you feel a “meh”, “okay”, or nothing significant. Something I’ve only recently learned is if you feel nothing: that thing probably sucks. Don’t settle for a mediocre feeling.

After noticing the feeling, you get a better sense of what it’s about. If you’re the creator of the experience, you can apply that feeling to modify the work. You change the experience itself until your taste becomes satisfied with the experience. With practice, you’ll understand these feelings more accurately and know the optimal modifications. It’s an iterative process of modification → feeling → modification, until the feeling is good enough. Your taste decides when it’s good enough.2

Iterations of a bull by Picasso Iterations of a bull by Picasso

Creating new ideas requires confidence in your own taste. Most times you’re venturing into the unknown. But there’s no manual for novelty. Your taste is the only light to show you the direction, but it requires confidence and trust.

Confidence must be paired with persistence. Your taste might require numerous iterations before it’s satisfied. Steve Jobs believed that his taste itself wasn’t spectacular. Rather his persistence in turning taste into reality.3 You need confidence to get even started, and persistence to continue until your taste is satisfied. Unless bestowed with incredible luck, the greatest creations require endless iterations. Look at human evolution: millions of iterations until humans got to where we are now.

So taste is mostly experience → feeling → awareness. And when creating something, you need confidence and persistence.

does objectively great taste exist?

Is taste subjective, or could it be objectively good? It’s both. At the same time.4

Taste takes as input everything we’ve experienced and felt in the past, and outputs our reaction to whatever we experience in the moment. From this definition it’s clear that each person has their own subjective taste, because no one has experienced the exact same things in life. So where does the objective part come in?

Compare two art pieces: a child’s random drawing and the movie Dune: Part Two. Everyone experiences them using their subjective taste. Yet the drawing resonates only with the child, while the movie touches millions around the world. What gives?

Everyone reacts to experiences based on their individual subjective taste. Taste is mostly humans feeling things based on their previous experiences.5 As humans share many of the same experiences, the base materials, our subjective tastes overlap.

Objectively better taste is then the affinity for the collective subjective taste of humanity. The overlapping part specifically. Ability to feel things that would uniquely resonate with millions. But does this mean that the most average person has the best taste? No. Great taste goes beyond that. It’s not having a taste similar to everyone else — it’s the ability to recognize what resonates deeply with as many different people as possible.6

Why does this make it objective? Because the purpose of human-made experiences is to make their audience feel something. And the reaction to a specific experience is no longer random and entirely dependent on the subjective taste of the observer. Rather, the experience contains a seed of universality that deeply touches a larger human audience. Great taste is the ability to see the seeds of universality.

The reality we deem objective is just an aggregation of all subjective realities. Take the color green for instance. Humans perceive light’s wavelengths as colors through their subjective perspective. Yet we consider our concept of the color green as an objective reality, because nearly the entire human population perceives it so. Same logic applies to objectively great experiences, and objectively great taste by extension.

Great taste is not only recognizing when you feel something great, but knowing when something isn’t there yet. Anyone can see the Sistine Chapel ceiling and recognize it as magical. But seeing an empty ceiling and feeling uneasy because it doesn’t yet look like the Sistine Chapel must have demanded an extraordinary taste.7

Sistine Chapel Ceiling Silenzio!

taste vs. thoughts & memorization

You can hold the same thoughts as anyone else, but thoughts are somewhat worthless currency in the realm of creation.8 Your taste is the most meaningful unique part about you. You can read 10 business books from the greatest founder-CEOs, yet barely gain anything useful for running your own business.9 Unlike your thoughts, taste does not operate using language or words. It operates using experiences and feelings, which is why words and thoughts barely shape your taste directly. However, their second-order effects can be significant.

Words and thoughts can be transformed into experiences, which can shape your taste. A few paragraphs can create an entire world in your mind. Reading a short story might make you cry or become angry. Imagination alone can trick our brains to experience events that never happened. Fiction and stories use the same medium as your subconscious is familiar with, feelings.

Thoughts also choose what is fed to your consciousness. This essay in its entirety is just words. The words themselves in this essay might not shape your taste much. But it’s possible that you become inspired by the words here. You might begin to look at your taste and the experiences you seek out completely differently. Cultivating your taste will lead you to new experiences, improve your taste, broaden your curiosity and help you to do great work.

While we’re at it we can throw memorization into the trash as well, it’s overrated. By memorization I mean the practice of recalling a conscious thought, an abstract idea, the chatter inside your skull. That blob of unprocessed information our society values so much, is useless except in passing exams or impressing others.

Think of a time you asked for feedback from someone you think is great at what they do. They don’t recall their memories of something similar in the past. No. They mostly operate based on how they feel about it. They use their taste, which has processed their previous feelings and experiences using unknown dark magic into something useful. Memories mostly supplement taste. None got great at what they do by memorizing a bunch of stuff. But here’s a cheat code if you do care about memory: attach a feeling to it. It seems that our memory is best at remembering feelings.10

how to cultivate taste

There are two ways of cultivating your own taste: experiencing and creating.

Experiences feed your subconscious. What you feel is a reflection of the sum of your past experiences. Every experience you feed your subconscious, might be used in the future. Therefore you choose intentionally what you feed it — it will shape your taste. Ideally get in as much source material as possible. Your taste learns by experiencing, not from what your consciousness tells it.

To refine taste towards novelty, seek out more novel experiences. If you want your taste to be attuned to the tastes of the masses, then seek out the timeless classics. Classics typically contain elements that are fundamental and universal to humans. You might not even notice it consciously, but they will leave an imprint that can resurface later.

But all humans experience things, read books, visit museums, watch movies, play games, visit other countries. What am I getting at? Intentionally choosing what you experience is the first part. The important part is your attention during those experiences. Be aware of how you feel after experiencing something. Notice why you feel that way. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. It could be something simple as a shade of blue reminding you of the sky on a sunny day.

Creating takes the process a step further. In addition to the above, you also modify the thing you are creating.11 Observe how your modifications change your reaction. Again, the same ideas apply to creating as they do for experiencing. You want as many repetitions as possible. Explore widely, not what you already can do. Your mind needs diverse source material. Keep observing how your taste reacts to everything.

So refining your taste is mostly experiencing plus creating. But there’s a caveat. You can’t always choose what you want to experience or create. Your curiosity has a say on that, often determining what you end up doing.

Curiosity is your subconscious looking for novel things that resonate. It might seem as if conscious thoughts don’t have control here. Wrong. Curiosity too can be refined. Learning to pay closer attention gives more source material for your taste. Attention alone can unlock near infinite potential from experiences. There’s always two parts to an experience: the inherent properties of what is experienced, and the subjective perspective that experiences it. There’s so much information that our brains have developed a habit of tuning out of most information. Off the bat we probably pay attention to less than 1% of our experiences’ properties.

So you can change your perspective with thoughts alone to unlock the remaining 99%. This new source material shapes what you become curious about, as you naturally seek out connections with what you’ve already experienced. Novelty and resonance is always in reference to your existing experiences. By paying closer attention and curating our experiences, we shape what we resonate with and find novelty in. Indirectly driving our curiosity forward.

Try it yourself. Pick something you see daily and observe it carefully. Look at its shapes, lines, texture, colors. Find something new you haven’t seen previously. I enjoy looking at the sea. Sometimes it has a rough, windy texture which creates small ripples on top of waves. Other times it’s calm and flowy, like a curved mirror. Sometimes it looks muddy and grim. Other times it shimmers brightly during the day, and reflects the colorful sunset at evening. I always find something new, interesting, and beautiful.

The relationship between you and your taste is symbiotic. Both support and rely on each other. Neither fully controlling the other. Often your taste has a direction it wants to go into, let it do its thing. But remember that your conscious thoughts can guide the direction. With enough effort you’ll distinguish between biases you should correct for, and emotions representing something profound.

One thing to never forget if you’re striving for an objectively better taste. You’re still cultivating your own subjective taste. So listen to how you feel, instead of what you think you should feel, or what society is telling you to feel.

does great taste matter?

Everything we do touches the minds of other humans. Why not do things that touch more people at a deeper level? You’ve taken so much out of the collective consciousness. You consume many great things in life: movies, books, food, and art. Why not put something interesting back into the collective pool for others to experience? It could be as simple as writing an essay or a tweet, all the way to making a movie or a video game. Ideally your creation should resonate with the widest possible audience as profoundly as possible. It’s a hard equation to solve. But one worth doing.

What if you want to make objectively great experiences, but your subjective taste is not up to same standards? Should you listen to your inner voice and make something you yourself want? Or instead go against your personal taste?

You cannot cheat yourself into great taste. So if possible, always listen to your own taste.12 You can always refine your taste afterward and feed it experiences that take you towards the direction you want. But operating without taste is like walking in the forest blind.

expanding your universe

Past year I’ve focused more on my own taste and what I feed it. My curiosity has increased. I understand better what my subconscious is trying to say, and I have more confidence in trusting what it’s making me feel. Now, I’m only 25, so I’m curious to see what it will look like when I’m 50, or 85. It’s funny how I once used to think that if I could find the best-in-class information on a specific topic, I could be as good as someone who has spent decades refining their taste. How naive.

Another good outcome is that I don’t worry about memorising or forgetting “good information” anymore. I trust my taste will do its job during the Night Shift and make use of the information if necessary.

Oddly writing this essay makes me more optimistic about the future. Just imagining all the interesting things I get to experience and create, with a new form of attention. Even this essay is an outcome of that.

Taste as I’ve described it here is necessary to all humans. I wonder then, would a more attuned taste make you more human? At the very least it will help you do better work.

The universe is only as large as our perception of it. When we cultivate our awareness, and our taste by extension, we expand the universe.13

Notes

  1. Perhaps because our subconscious has existed for two million years, while our language is only a hundred thousand years old. It never evolved to use language. ↳︎

  2. Exactly what I’m doing while rewriting this paragraph. I read it, feel something off. Rewrite it. Feel different. Continue until I’m satisfied. ↳︎

  3. I doubt his taste itself was that special… from Steve Jobs Archive. ↳︎

  4. This section is partially based on this and this essay by Paul Graham. ↳︎

  5. There’s probably something innate in all humans that shapes our taste. I doubt we enjoy harmony in music or colors solely due to our past experiences. ↳︎

  6. Giving you a rough objective greatness function: number of people X differences in their background X strength of the effect. ↳︎

  7. It’s almost paradoxical. You need to be attuned to the subjective taste of the masses, yet unique enough to create new experiences. ↳︎

  8. By thoughts I mean the chatter in your skull. ↳︎

  9. I was always puzzled how despite having all the knowledge in the world at our fingertips, very few effectively use that information. Reading a book once superficially is not enough to shape your taste. ↳︎

  10. Perhaps vibes is a better term than feelings. ↳︎

  11. These modifications often come from the same place as your taste does. ↳︎

  12. Assuming you have the control to take that decision, and you trust your own taste. ↳︎

  13. Slightly modified quote from the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. My addition in italics. ↳︎