The Four-Step Process to Develop Good Taste

Sam breaks down taste development into a repeatable four-step system. Step one: decide what you want to say — most people skip this and jump straight to copying random things without knowing why. Step two: blindly copy the people who already say what you want to say. Just like learning guitar by playing Jingle Bells before writing your own song, you copy to learn the texture. Step three: learn the rules — read books, watch videos, and ask yourself why the things you copied actually work. Step four: study the history behind those rules.

The definition of good taste, Sam argues, is understanding what you want to say and following the rules to say it. The definition of great taste is then taking those rules and breaking them. But you have to earn the right to break rules by mastering them first.

This framework applies to virtually anything — fashion, web design, writing, music production, branding. Sam spent three to five months on fashion using this exact process and claims it made him better than 90% of people. The key insight is that taste is not innate. It is a learnable skill with a concrete process behind it.