Your taste is why your work disappoints you.

Taste is your ability to tell when something is a bit off, taste is developed through years of toil in your industry where you pick up what works.

The core skill for getting on in your industry with Ai is understanding taste.

Taste is your ability to tell when something is a bit off, taste is developed through years of toil in your industry where you pick up what works.

We are familiar with the concept of taste when we look at food. There are those who can cook and those who can’t.

There are two skills we need to acquire in this age of AI. The refining of our taste and technical ability to express it through LLM’s

As it currently stands you need to know how to surface the correct knowledge in the right way to get the results you want. Think Context, Structure and iteration.

When it comes to prompting, most people accept the fist result. I see a lot of people disappointed after their first prompt. What they miss is this is only the beginning of the refining process. Where you push the LLM to do better work.

Think of it like cooking. You could give three people the same ingredients but they wont produce the same quality. The person who put in the work to learn techniques, make mistakes, learn the culture will always produce the best food.

This reminds me of the 2007 film Ratatouille - where the plot revolves around a chef who believes anyone can cook, even a rat. Spoiler. The rat becomes an amazing five star chef because he caught the culture + technique.

Ira Glass, an American radio host on creative work says “Nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish someone had 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.

A lot of 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 we want it to have.

The most important thing you can do is a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline, so that every week you will finish one story. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

I will write more about taste and creativity but for today I say BYOT!

Bring your own taste to the LLM party!