Taste

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. Many people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out, or you are still in this phase, you have to know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s going to take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. ― Ira Glass

As we try to do new things and move past the known, there is no one to guide you. So another way to define our goals, is to look at what we like and in some cases just as important what we hate. This is the one time when it is ok to be a hater. That hate is what drives us forward to not accept the status quo.

Our taste is what sets us apart, this is your natural bar for quality.

Your taste is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. We can steal and get opinions, all good things, but I think to create something great it has to be authentic.

This is really about finding what makes you happy, not anyone else. Maybe it is not about learning, it is about accepting and then refining.

You listen to more music to find more things that expand your views. You eat every type of food.

I think this is one part of this process which less additive and more subtractive. You are stripping away the things that are blocking you from following your taste.

That being said, as you get exposed to more things your taste will improve. Try to find as many things that can show the range of possibilities. That shows you the contrasts in possibilities.

Keep looking for "I didn't know x could be this" moments.

Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin has produced some of the most iconic albums of all time. Licensed To Ill, The Black Album, Wildflowers.

His resume is astonishing, producing even one of these albums would have been career defining, but he has done it over and over again.

How?

Well, if we are to take his word for it, he has no real musical or producing skills. He can barely play an instrument, and claims that he doesn't know how to even work a soundboard. ¹

"(I have) No technical ability" "I know nothing about music"

"I know what I like and I don't like, and I am decisive about what I like and don't like"

"the confidence I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel" Is the response to what he gets paid for.

I feel like he may be downplaying his talent a bit, but I tend to overall believe him.

When you make something it really is difficult to evaluate it. Having someone that you can ask is this good or bad that you actually believe is an insanely valuable person.

There is so much music that you listen to, and it is just baffling that it left the studio.

You need to be able to produce great art but at the same time need to know when it needs to be edited or reworked.

His whole job and career is basically a taste tester.

Steve Jobs

Comedian Bill Burr has this whole bit basically tearing down the hype and myth around how Steve Jobs was a great man.

His basic premise is that Steve Jobs couldn't do shit. He wasn't really an engineer, or programmer or designer. It was all the engineers, designers, testers, etc. that made these things possible.

It is not entirely wrong. This is also a hard aspect if you move from your craft to management, is the feeling that you are less if you are not actually doing the work directly. But that aside.

He is not wrong in that all these remarkable people brought a vision to life and all the credit or most of it goes to Steve Jobs.

But let's ask the question. What separates Apple from most companies? What made the iPod and then iPhone iconic?

It was taste and the ability to see what was really possible.

Steve Jobs had a unique and strong design aesthetic, he knew what he liked and what was good and not.

He also wasn't stupid or clueless. He studied tons of things and could tell when someone was bullshitting him. You couldn't bullshit him. He was a master at first principle thinking.

He knew what was possible. People don't do things until things are proven. Those people on the edge can push where others would stop.

There is this story of the early iPhone development, and Steve wanting it to be smaller. The engineers balked and said it couldn't be done. Steve threw the prototype in a fish tank and all these bubbles came out, showing that there were still pockets of air and space in the device. ²

"Those are air bubbles," he snapped. "That means there's space in there. Make it smaller."

What the engineers were really saying was that they didn't know how to make it smaller. That is very different from it couldn’t be smaller. These often get conflated.

This is why thinking from first principles is so important.

Here is the unfortunate problem. Most people don't push the boundaries. They stop at good enough.

There have been a ton of companies that want to do what Apple does, but they can't.

So while I agree that often people like Steve Jobs get too much credit, there is some truth to the idea that level of quality wouldn't have been reached without him. See Microsoft.

It is having a point of view and a standard, a refined taste.

Bauhaus

When I started off programming, I didn’t know really what it meant to be a good programmer, and sure didn’t know what it meant to write good code.

I didn't know what I was doing, so I started reading everything I could and many of those books were on design.

Books like The Design Of Everyday things.

I learned about Bauhaus.