Why Do You Like What You Like
Perspective is fundamentally personal. No two people experience life in exactly the same way; even identical twins develop subtle differences in taste, preferences, and opinions. Your perspective, shaped by your unique life experience, underpins the preferences and tastes guiding you daily.
Historically, spreading a unique perspective was challenging and slow. Cultural shifts or great movements often took years, decades, or even centuries to unfold. Today, however, anyone can broadcast their perspective instantly, freely, and broadly through social media. But with this newfound ease comes a flood of content, most indistinguishable, mediocre, and quickly forgotten.
In an age of effortless creation and instantaneous distribution, what separates great content from the mess of the masses?
Taste.
Not just liking something, but deeply understanding why you like it, describing it precisely, and communicating it clearly, particularly to AI collaborators. Taste is personal discernment made articulate. Without it, your voice fades into the noise, your content becoming just another bland post destined for digital obscurity.
AI tools aggregate content from existing human outputs, inherently pushing results towards a generic middle-ground; safe, predictable, and widely acceptable. Then add to this that the underlying algorithms in the world serve up content directly related to our previous behaviour, we are left no chance to truly wonder if we actually like what we consume.
Vague or generic instructions produce similarly bland results. However, those who precisely articulate their nuanced taste produce compelling, distinctive content. They set trends, resonating deeply and broadly with audiences.
To thrive in this new era, practice explicitly identifying what resonates with you and why. Improve your ability to articulate nuances clearly to AI partners. This skill transforms AI from an aggregator of mediocrity into an amplifier of your individuality.
As my friend Rich Mulholland advises students in his course, Story to Stage, to be an incredible speaker you must aim to become the "best version of self." Leveraging AI effectively requires clearly knowing and articulating your personal taste. AI should amplify your unique voice, not aggregate the voices of everyone else.
Let me leave you with a challenge.
Don’t just let the next song autoplay. Proactively choose something unusual to you.
Don’t just let Netflix suggest what’s next. Watch something you’d normally ignore.
Follow someone you disagree with on social media.
Eat something unfamiliar.
Then ask yourself: do you actually like it, or were you nudged there by someone else's taste? It doesn’t matter which one is true, but it does matter that you know.
Now go one step further. Try to explain to someone why you did or did not like that new thing you tried. Try to describe the exact feeling it gave you. Could you explain it to an AI? Could you ask it to create a song, or a t-shirt, or a photograph that captures that feeling?
You don’t have to. But soon, someone else will and they’ll use that articulation to produce better ideas, faster, with tools that work best when given depth, specificity, and direction. Those are the people who will define the next wave of trends, stories, brands, and breakthroughs.
Everyone else will just consume them.
—
Stay Curious,
Nic
Ten ways I used AI this week:
1. Strategic thinking & concept development
Clarified big ideas, challenged assumptions for articles and documents, and used AI as a sounding board for shaping intellectual frameworks.
2. Keynote development & visual storytelling
Built out narrative arcs, refined visual concepts, and iterated on illustrations for upcoming talks.
3. Brand and naming exploration
Explored new naming concepts, backstories, and identity framing for personal and project branding.
4. Health tracking & personal insights
Logged data and monitored trends related to personal wellness and pet health to spot patterns and support decision-making.
5. Product pricing & revenue modelling
Tested subscription strategies and refined pricing structures for a product I’m getting ready to launch. Skopios (remember, my ChatGPT partner’s name) save me weeks of data modelling, spreadsheet building and cost calculations. Truly revelatory.
6. Workflow automation & app integration
Mapped out how to integrate various workflow tools to try and understand how AI agents work.
7. Customer experience & platform safety
Investigated potential vulnerabilities in a product model and addressed data privacy concerns across tools. I also used Replit to stabilise and secure the backend for a project.
8. Research & situational awareness
In general, used Skopios Sought information about public figures, philosophical ideas, and obscure cultural references for context-building.
9. Home organisation & interior design
Used AI to visualise furniture, make purchase decisions, and style home spaces more efficiently.
10. Admin & document handling
Generated and edited invoices, formatted notes for reuse, and handled business documentation with AI assistance.
To hold myself accountable I want to share updates about my side projects every newsletter.
New
Something is launch soon! In the next newsletter I’ll be launching my first real product that I’ve been using for a few weeks. Exciting times.
1000fifteen - An app to help me learn the 1000 most frequently spoken Dutch words and speak basic sentences. I have expanded this to Greek as a language to add.
Splitville - I’m not giving up on this one! I found an open-source project that I’m going to try and implement to restart this.
Progressing
Decision Tracker - 215 users, 11 likes and 3 comments. No new updates or releases.
Still running
GoodGoodweeds - Changed the name and still tracking my own weed reviews until I can get this out in the world! A weed review site.
StumbleSong - Still works! Discover music you didn’t know you loved.
Deadpool
Flirtbot - Moved to deadpool, dating apps have started adding this functionality natively.
PositionMe - Moved to deadpool. I think monetising this would be too complex. An app for couples who want to try new sex positions. You both rate various positions and the app then suggests the most compatible options to you to try.
BucketListAssist - Added to the deadpool for now. Too complex for me to stay engaged.
Pixeldash - Added to the deadpool - 20 April 2025. I don’t want to build games. While this is still live on the domain, no progress has been made and I’ve decided game dev is fun for the weekends but I want to spend my time on solving problems.
A list of links that I think are worth saving and a short breakdown of why I shared it with you.
Unpopular opinion: No one cares if you're a "Vibe Coder" or senior dev, they only care if your product solves their problem.
If you made it this far, to me a huge favour and share this with someone. They need it, I need it, give us a win, hey?