How to find your own taste
A guide for myself and for you.
I read an alarming statistic the other day. Apparently, 48% of Gen Z purchases products now that they don’t like or use. And nearly half of Gen Z finds it harder to make decisions today.1 Which is to say, Gen Z doesn’t know what they want. And it’s not hard to figure out why: this generation is living online. They’ve grown up on algorithms spoon-feeding them products, aesthetic trends and political narratives.
Most of us are right there alongside them, regardless of our generation. Even if you’re not scrolling Tiktok or Instagram for 10 hours a day, you’re likely using ChatGPT and skimming AI-generated summaries for your Google searches. We’re outsourcing our analytical thinking and decisions big and small, leaving us less confident in our own instincts. We’re slowly but surely losing touch with who we are and what we like.
I’ve always been fascinated by identity. Who I am, what’s going on in other people’s heads, what we’re drawn to, the human (or at least Western) obsession with “finding” ourselves, whether that’s even possible. And specifically, taste. The word taste itself is an amorphous term, but I mean it here in the sense of our personal identities and cultural judgment: The things we create, the objects we choose, the way we style ourselves, the people we surround ourselves with, the homes make for ourselves – and why.
So I’ve put together a sort of guide for you and myself to help us find our way back to who we are and what we like.
1) Realize taste is not a performance
We tend to mix this up now because of apps like Instagram and Pinterest, which encourage us to curate our profiles for an audience. And while that may be helpful for building your “brand” or reflecting your taste, it’s not how you find it.
When you’re curating or performing for an audience, you are not your natural self. You’re consciously or subconsciously editing yourself, optimizing for the best results. The weird thing that doesn’t fit the grid is dismissed. The somewhat controversial choice that might lose you followers gets deleted. The image likely to get the most engagement gets prioritized. How do you connect with your instincts and point of view when you’re suppressing or optimizing it for other people?
Your taste is between you and you. It’s not about how you’re perceived or what aesthetic trend you fall into. Taste is an expression of your authentic self. It taps into whatever inside you has decided what’s objectively good or beautiful. Which brings me to my next point.
2) Find a private place to explore your taste
Even if you’re not curating and optimizing, you’re still performing for a silent audience on social media. The algorithm sees you like one thing and starts pushing you hard into a specific niche or flat “aesthetic,” trying to define something that should be dynamic.
You have to go where the algorithms and and other people can’t find you.
Find one private spot to collect your inspiration, references, thoughts, favorite products, random objects you find interesting, wishlists, highlights, photos, screenshots – whatever resonates with you in some way. Don’t show it to other people. Don’t think about them at all when you’re deciding what to put in there. Just save what makes you stop scrolling for a second, or whatever inspires you or feels somehow like you in the moment.
I use mymind for this, because it’s made for exactly this purpose: a single, private place to put all your ideas and inspiration. But you can use whatever you like. A physical journal, a folder on your desktop, a collage you hide under your bed. The only thing that matters is that it’s private.
My friend texted me today saying how much she loves having the house to herself when her husband is away. She misses him, but she feels a sense of ease and relaxation moving around her home alone, like she can do whatever she wants and have her space just how she likes it. We all need that space sometimes, both physically and mentally. You cannot find your taste when other people are watching or offering their opinions. It’s like dancing alone in your living room vs. with someone else.
✦ I share more about this practice in this essay → The most creative people you know have a secret repertoire
“Taste is an expression of your authentic self. It taps into whatever inside you has decided what’s objectively good or beautiful.”
3) It only has to make sense to you
Even without the audience watching, we let them get in our heads. We often second guess what we like because we’re seeing it through the eyes of other people, and they don’t matter here. It’s your impressions and judgment we’re interested in.
As you collect inspiration in your private treasure trove, let it be messy and chaotic. Even better if it is, because that’s how it works in our heads too. You don’t have to explain or justify this to anyone.
Revisit your private collection often and note the qualities of the things you like. Think about what feels “right” about them to you. Dig deeper into whatever you’ve saved and follow the rabbit trails they lead you to. Eventually, you may see specific things or ideas showing up often, or some interesting overlaps or juxtapositions. Take note of that too. Your goal is simply to keep paying attention and digging deeper without any self-consciousness.
Your taste doesn’t have to fit an existing pattern or be anything you recognize. It’s less about defining a style and more about connecting with that deeper, perceiving part of yourself. Look for your own patterns between things you’re drawn to, or experiment with putting unexpected things together. Maybe you’ve saved a steel table in your collection and you see it next to a frilly sock. These things don’t go together, but something about them side by side speaks to you. Remember that.
The guy who first put pineapple on pizza wasn’t doing it because it made sense. He just liked it.
✦ More on embracing your weirdness here → It’s time you reclaim your right to idiosyncrasy
4) Expand your sources. Widen your net.
Platforms like Instagram or Pinterest are great resources for finding your taste, but they shouldn’t be the only place you browse.
Taste comes from deeper awareness and education, which you won’t gain from rattling around the same old echo chambers. Spend enough time on social media and your taste becomes a copy of a copy. You start liking things because they’re familiar, not because they move you. The algorithms only skim the surface, keeping you in a circular loop of passing trends. Your taste isn’t “cottage core” or “y2k,” which are only reductive terms that categorize trends so businesses and influencers can commodify them.
Your taste is, and comes from: your values or life philosophy, books you read, movies you watch, people you admire, art that speaks to you, music you listen to, places you travel to, history and culture you’re exposed to, your upbringing, your environment, your family. It’s how you’re perceiving and responding to the world around you. The wider your world, the deeper your perception of things. Understanding ourselves and our sensibilities requires going deeper.
If you’re researching online, try to randomize things a bit more. Follow different people, dig deeper for other platforms and websites, watch films you can’t find on Netflix. And then get offline and immerse yourself in the real world. Go to a museum, take a walk, sit at a cafe and people watch.
✦ Here’s a good place to start → Less doomscrolling, more Bloomscrolling: A master list of cool websites, archives & hidden treasures
5) Look more closely at what you’ve already chosen in your life
Real taste is not some culturally relevant slot you fit into. It’s the amalgam of things that have embedded themselves in your psyche and influenced what you instinctively connect to or recognize as “good.” Maybe these choices make you feel safe or more confident for some reason (more on that in this essay). While taste isn’t just about aesthetics, I’ll use my taste in fashion as an example. My fashion sense is informed by very specific influences and people in my life, including:
My aunts - One wore oversized drape-y clothing, chunky clogs, velvet two piece sets, clips in her hair, luxurious fur lined coats. The other wore LL Bean, knit sweaters, tortoiseshell glasses. I adored both of them growing up, and some wardrobe choices I make are inextricably linked with my affection for them / fascination with them.
The 90s - I grew up in the 90s and will forever love many aspects of that era. I can point to several different cultural touchstones or experiences that still sit somewhere in me: movies like The Parent Trap and The Little Princess. TV shoes like Hey Arnold. The American furniture and interior design style of that time. All of it’s swirled up in there in there somewhere and connects somehow to the fashion I’m drawn to today.
My parents - My mom dressed us in stripes. She wore lots of soft, oversized flannels. My dad always wore these heavy rugby shirts and ratty old crewneck sweatshirts. They both dressed for comfort and wore the same pieces for decades. Usually high quality, non-synthetic materials. I still reach for these materials or textures or patterns (especially stripes, I will forever be obsessed) because they just “feel right” to me. Which brings me to a big one:
Comfort - If I look at the pieces I always reach for vs. those I avoid, it comes down to comfort. I instinctively reach for cashmere, cotton or other non-synthetic material because it’s soft or breathable. I go for my worn-in jeans or linen pants because I can move freely in them. Our values define our taste, and feeling at ease in my body is clearly valuable to me based on the choices I make.
Most of these decisions and preferences are subconscious, but if I look at old photos and analyze my wardrobe closely, I can trace the influences.
What are you already choosing? What do you keep coming back to? Write that down. Or take a photo of it. Or find the reference online. Save it in that private space you’ve hopefully already established. This is building taste with meaning, not based on fads or algorithms. No one can tell you what that is, no one can copy it.
✦ I have more thoughts on this, of course → Every choice is a confession
The process of finding and developing your taste is ideally organic. If this approach does nothing for you, that’s fine! Find your own way.
And, importantly: Be unapologetic about what you love. If you sincerely connect with pumpkin spice lattes and “Live Love Laugh” signs and your taste is considered “basic” by the current culture, love it anyway. What we’re going for here is unfiltered, genuine flow between you and the world.
Morning Consult, Core Narratives and Decision-Making (commissioned by Pinterest), US, January 2025
I’ve been using mymind for a couple of weeks now, where have y’all been all my life? 😄
I'm more and more drawn to the analogue version of this work. Journals, scrapbooks and more. There's something too smooth and too not-real about this work being done digitally -- for me anyway.