--- title: Judgment is the most important skill in an age of infinite leverage created: 2024-11-18T09:18:12 modified: 2025-11-20T05:43:45 --- > _“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of experience comes from bad judgment.” — Rita Mae Brown / Will Rogers_ > _“A good judgment is usually the result of experience. And experience is frequently the result of bad judgment. But to learn from the experience of others requires those who have the experience to share the knowledge with those who follow.” ― Henry Petroski, [To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/263211)_ > _[“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone 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 that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1oZhEIrer4)_ [^1] > _[“Taste honors someone’s standards of quality, but also the distinctive way the world bounces off a person. It reflects what they know about how the world works, and also what they’re working with in their inner worlds. When we recognize true taste, we are recognizing that alchemic combination of skill and soul.” — Brie Wolfson](https://www.are.na/editorial/notes-on-taste)_ > _“I don’t think my taste in aesthetics is that much different than a lot of other people’s. The difference is that I just get to be really stubborn about making things as good as we all know they can be. That’s the only difference._ > > _…your [taste] gets more refined as you make mistakes. I’ve had a chance to make a lot of mistakes…But the real big thing is: if you’re going to make something, it doesn’t take any more energy—and rarely does it take more money—to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time. Not that much more. And a willingness to do so, a willingness to persevere until it’s really great.” — Steve Jobs (via _[Make Something Wonderful](https://stevejobsarchive.com/book)_)_LAR_LINK_PLACEHOLDER}: > _“At first it seems that we need only know the diverse sources of our pleasures in order to acquire taste, and that once we had read what philosophy tells us on this subject, we would have good taste and could boldly judge works of art. But natural taste is not the same as theoretical knowledge. It consists in the rapid and subtle application of the very rules which we do not know.” — [Voltaire](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/did2222.0000.168/--taste)_ --- > _[“When judgment becomes sufficiently refined, we call it taste.” — Naval Ravikant](https://x.com/naval/status/1715219086735483344)_ = 嗅覺 = 品味 = 眼光 = Taste --- Taste > Skills --- Taste is choosing. It’s scarcity amidst an abundance of choice. It’s judgment that is socially valuable and also personal. It’s a kind of intimacy with detail. It requires deep familiarity and skillful consideration of quality. --- People with great taste in a certain field are those who have spent the most time there. --- # [Judgment Is the Decisive Skill](https://nav.al/judgment) > Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment. > The first part of your career’s spent hustling to get leverage. Once you have the leverage, then you wanna slow down a bit, because your judgment really matters. > In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important skill. > Judgment, especially demonstrated judgment, with high accountability, clear track record, is critical. > Without experience, judgment is often less than useless. > The people with the best judgment are among the least emotional. The more outraged someone is, the worse their judgment. --- [Nibble and your appetite will grow — Steph Ango](https://stephango.com/nibble) --- [Decision Making](decision-making.md) [^1]: 眼高，也要手高