Work vs. taste

Work is what you produce. Taste is what you notice. Most personal brands are 100% work and 0% taste — which is why they all sound the same.

A brand built only on work is a resume. A brand built on taste is a lens. People don't follow resumes. They follow lenses. A lens is a way of seeing that, once you adopt it, you can't unsee.

What taste actually is

Taste isn't "I like nice things." Taste is the pattern you notice that others miss.

"Every great landing page has one verb above the fold. Two verbs and it dies."

That's taste. It's a specific observation, drawn from attention, that someone else can now use. Taste is teachable — it's a pattern, not a preference.

The brands with the sharpest taste are the ones that say what they're noticing, not what they're making.

The taste post

A taste post has a specific shape:

1. The observation — what you noticed
2. The pattern — why it keeps showing up
3. The implication — what to do about it

Most posts skip straight to #3 ("here's what to do") with no #1 or #2. That's advice without taste. Advice is cheap. Taste is the expensive thing — it requires attention, and attention is the scarce resource.

The curation move

The fastest way to build taste is to curate what you love. Not your own work — other people's.

• Found a landing page you love? Post it with one sentence on why.
• Read a book that changed how you think? Quote the sentence that did it.
• Saw a competitor do something brilliant? Say so publicly.

Curation does two things. First, it positions you as someone with a lens — not just a maker. Second, it builds goodwill with the people you curate, who tend to be the ones you want to know.

The anti-taste trap

A trap: performing taste you don't have. "Here are five things I love" posted as a thread, when you actually love two and tolerated three.

Real taste is fewer items, more conviction. A list of two things you'd defend is worth more than a list of ten you'd hedge. Specificity is the tell. "I love good design" is not taste. "I love the way Linear treats keyboard shortcuts as a primary surface" is.

Your playbook for this lesson

1. For the next week, notice what you notice. Keep a list — three items per day.
2. At week's end, pick the one observation you'd defend in an argument.
3. Write it as a taste post: observation, pattern, implication. Three short paragraphs.
4. Post it. Do not bundle it with your work. Let taste stand alone.
5. Repeat weekly. After a quarter, your taste posts will outnumber your work posts. That's the goal.