notes on notes on taste

While taste is often focused on a single thing, it is often formed through the integration of diverse, and wide-ranging inputs. Steve Jobs has said, “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists ... See more

But I also believe taste is something we can and should try to cultivate. Not because taste itself is a virtue, per se, but because I’ve found a taste-filled life to be a richer one. To pursue it is to appreciate ourselves, each other, and the stuff we’re surrounded by a whole lot more.

Taste is about preference. When someone has "good taste" they have well-refined preferences. Taste sounds like a snotty term that a sommelier uses, but we all have tastes, even if we're not talking about taste in full-bodied reds from Northern Italy. We have taste in music, taste in design, and taste in literature (even if your literature is banger... See more

Taste is about discovery, having interest in things, and making a lot of mistakes. It’s about trying to find the authentic set of choices that both reflect your own background, but also the choices and discoveries that you have made consciously and deliberately. It's always changing and it's also always in reflection of what everyone else is doing ... See more

Writer George Saunders calls this “achieving the iconic space,” and it’s what he’s after when he meets his creative writing students. “They arrive already wonderful. What we try to do over the next three years is help them achieve what I call their “iconic space” — the place from which they will write the stories only they could write, using what m... See more

You probably already have an intuitive sense of the people in your life who have great taste in something. They’re the people you always go to for restaurant or movie or gear recommendations. Maybe it’s the person you ask to be an extra set of eyes on an email or a project brief before you send it out.

So, how to wrap my arms around this term in a way that captures its spirit without flattening it?