Coaching practices for My Taste Has Gotten So Refined and Narrow That I Only Ever Take in the Same Approved Stuff in My Lane and I'm Realizing That Diet is Exactly Why My Work Has Stopped Surprising Even Me I Never Let Anything I'd Normally Dismiss Anywhere Near it
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Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My taste has gotten so refined and narrow that I only ever take in the same approved stuff in my lane, and I’m realizing that diet is exactly why my work has stopped surprising even me
- I eat the meal, hear the music, walk the beautiful place, but it all stays oddly flat and surface-level
- I eat while scrolling, watch while texting, take my pleasures with my attention split a dozen ways
- I just consume whatever the feed decides to put in front of me
- The things I once treasured I now have on tap, all the time, and they’ve gone flat
Practices that may help
- Diversify creative inputs: consume across domains and outside your taste
Read, watch, listen to work that you do not immediately like — outside-taste input breaks the feedback loop that narrows creative range over time.
The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice - Sharpen your senses to deepen the experience
Deliberately tune into one sensory channel at a time to get more from a pleasurable experience.
Savoring the Moment, Made Practical - Sharpening perception and blocking distraction
Heighten one sense and shut out interruptions to intensify a good experience.
Savoring: Getting More From the Good - Design a media diet with explicit inclusion criteria
Specify in advance what media you will consume, from which sources, and for how long — rather than consuming whatever the algorithm serves.
The Attention Economy: Reclaiming Your Focus from Systems Designed to Capture It - Using scarcity or seasonality to heighten appreciation
Restrict access to something abundant in order to restore its perceived value.
Mono no Aware: The Pathos of Things - Training preference toward the present
Deliberately savour what you already own or have, as if it were new.
Santosha: The Practice of Contentment - Practise opportunity awareness: stay open to unplanned paths
Fixed goals create attentional blindness to lateral opportunities that might be better than the original destination.
Goal-Free Living: When Process Beats Destination - Use a theme to focus the sensory field
Pick one constraint — a color, a material, a decade, a question — and let it guide what you notice.
The Artist Date, Made Practical - Protect time for deep play
Maintain a serious non-work interest that demands real skill and attention.
Deliberate Rest - Intentional field-crossing
Regularly study a field entirely outside your domain and ask what it could teach yours.
The Medici Effect: Innovation at the Intersection
Related concerns
- Curate Information Intake
Specify in advance what media you will consume, from which sources, and for how long — rather than consuming whatever the algorithm serves.
Design a media diet with explicit inclusion criteria
- Savoring Through Restriction
Restrict access to something abundant in order to restore its perceived value.
Using scarcity or seasonality to heighten appreciation
- How To Develop Taste
Read, watch, listen to work that you do not immediately like — outside-taste input breaks the feedback loop that narrows creative range over time.
Diversify creative inputs: consume across domains and outside your taste
- Savoring Habit
Savoring is the deliberate act of noticing, prolonging, and intensifying a positive experience instead of letting it slip past. Positive-psychology research links a stronger savoring capacity to greater well-being and slower hedonic adaptation; the effect is real, though it depends on attention to the present rather than capturing or analyzing the moment.
- Simple Pleasures Practice
Build a reliable repertoire of simple, accessible, non-escalating pleasures and protect time for them.
Cultivating simple pleasures deliberately
- Stoic Savoring Technique
Treat any positive experience as if it is happening for the last time — not morbidly, but to be fully present.
The last day of summer
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