On taste
Imagine thinking you can sing. You love it, practice constantly, even audition. Then one day you record yourself and realize you're terrible. The scary part isn't being bad. It's having been completely blind to it. That's the core fear: what if your taste itself is broken, and you can't even tell?
Taste isn't just opinion
It's tempting to say taste is subjective and leave it at that. But every creative field has a rough consensus on what's great and what isn't. You don't have to agree with every expert, but if you can't understand why they hold their opinions, well enough to have a real conversation about it, your taste needs work.
A simple litmus test: can you engage with the people you admire when you disagree? Not just have a preference, but articulate a position they'd take seriously? If not, you're not there yet.
Your work has a ceiling, and taste is it
Beginners get into creative work because they have taste, but their skills haven't caught up. That gap is painful but productive. It's what drives you to keep going when your own work disappoints you.
The real problem is when the taste itself is underdeveloped. Then you don't even know what to aim for. You can grind for years and plateau without understanding why.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.
Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.
And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.
I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.
—Ira Glass
Recognizing bad is easy, recognizing good is hard
You know bad when you see it. It doesn't take deliberation. But distinguishing between good and great is where taste actually lives. If you can spot the obvious misses but can't tell why experienced people pass on work that looks strong to you, that's exactly what underdeveloped taste feels like.
Getting better at it
Do these:
- Accept that quality exists on a scale. If you don't buy this, nothing else matters. You don't have to be a snob about everything, but in whatever you care about doing well, you need to believe there's a real difference between good and great.
- Find the people whose work blows you away. Then find who they follow. Keep going. Build a web of people whose judgment you trust.
- Study how they see. Don't just consume their work, learn their lens. Read what they read, watch their talks, understand their reasoning. Watching a hundred movies teaches you something; watching them through the eyes of someone at the top of the craft teaches you ten times more.
- Critique everything. Move past "I like this" or "this sucks" and ask why. What decisions did the creator make? Would you have done it differently? Were any decisions non-obvious? This is a muscle. Do it constantly until it's automatic.
- Talk about it with others. Opinions kept to yourself never get tested. Most of what you'll learn comes from nerding out over details with people who care. Get specific. Discuss what worked and what didn't.
- Make things and get honest feedback. Doing teaches more than watching. And feedback that stings is feedback that's useful. Always.
The uncomfortable middle
There's a stage between realizing your taste is lacking and it actually getting good. You start seeing flaws everywhere, in your own work, in things you used to admire. Everything feels worse because you're finally seeing clearly. That's not regression, it's progress. The discomfort means the calibration is working.
Taste compounds
Taste compounds. The better it gets, the faster you improve at the craft itself, because you can see what needs fixing. People with great taste learn faster, not because they're smarter, but because they have a sharper target to aim at.
Taste is a skill. Some people pick it up faster, but anyone can develop it.