What I Do When I Can’t Sleep

A few years ago, when I felt like I was grasping desperately for something in my life that I couldn’t name, I used to get up past midnight to smell spices. 

They would be standing like little toy army men on the gray countertop in my kitchen. A battalion of clear glass cylinders that tapered slightly at the top to meet green metal lids with ribbed edges. On the top of each lid was a label in white serif script: cinnamon, turmeric, chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, bay leaf. 

I’d stand by the spices and close my eyes. I’d carefully rearrange the bottles into a random order with my fingertips. Then, with darkness wrapped around me like a blanket, I’d pick one up, unscrew the top, bring it to my nose, and sniff. I’d try to measure the resulting experience as carefully as a drill sergeant inspecting the posture of a new recruit. I’d note the sharp burn of cinnamon, the sweet cloy of bay leaf, or the dollar pizza texture of garlic powder. Then I’d make my choice: “chili powder,” I’d say.

I’d open my eyes, and look down. Cumin. (I was not very good at this when I started.)

I’d put the cumin down, rescramble the bottles, and start again. I’d do this over and over. After a while, my head would clear. I’d yawn, stretch, and go back to sleep. 

.    .    .

Smelling things blind, and then labeling them helps your brain to connect smells to words. Naming smells, in turn, helps you understand, refine, and communicate what you like and why. In short, naming is crucial to the development of taste.

I picked up my smelling habit from someone I met at a friend’s wedding. We were seated next to each other, and when he tasted the wine they served, he immediately reeled off a vivid list of tasting notes that would make a master som blush. 

“Big fruit on the nose, flowers, black plums, with a little bit of chocolate.” He did it with the obvious pleasure of someone who wasn’t performing a status-oriented party trick. He just loved wine, and he loved being able to describe why. 

Listening to him name exactly what he liked about the wine turned up the hairs on the back of my neck. Suddenly, my own experience of it was deeper and more satisfying. I wanted to know: how was he able to identify these flavors? 

He told me the secret was to blindly smell things and try to label them. You see, the part of your brain that’s responsible for smells is naturally mute. It’s called the olfactory bulb and it’s an ancient fist of neurons just behind your eyes. It has only indirect backroad connections to the areas of the brain that control language like Broca’s area. So, even though you might have an easy time knowing whether or not you like a scent, it’s not easy to label that scent with a word. It’ll feel like groping through a dark closet for something you know is there, but can’t quite find.

My new friend at this wedding said that after building up his blind-smelling chops the world opened up for him in ways he never could have imagined. He’d be on a hike and catch the faint redness of strawberry on the wind. Or he’d be sitting in his apartment and would notice when his neighborhood bakery was making his favorite croissants. 

I’ve found my midnight-smelling habit has had a significant impact on my cooking. It’s now much easier to identify what I like about the food I’m eating. This heightens my enjoyment, makes it enjoyable to talk about food, and makes it easier for me to make more of it in the future.

Suddenly cumin is not something familiar but unnamed in the background like an extra in a movie. It is a force to be called forth and deployed when needed. Cumin is a close-range tool, like a soldier armed with a cutlass or a crowbar. It’s best in chilis, soups, or meat dishes where each ingredient dukes it out in hot combat in a large pot for many hours. It is not effective in lighter, cooler, climes where subtler tools like butter or fresh basil are called for.

I think there’s a deep lesson here. It’s about how to develop taste, not just in food or wine, but in any creative endeavor that’s important to you: building products, writing essays, building marketing campaigns, or making YouTube videos.

In each of these domains, you already know instinctively what you like. Moment-by-moment you are drawn to things: Apple’s Vision Pro, the title of a particular book, or a certain YouTuber’s intro sequence. You also shy away from other things: try-hard tweet threads, or podcasts about conspiracy theories. But this whole process is done in a part of your brain that is pre-linguistic and intuitive. Therefore it’s private and unrefined. 

Making what you like explicit is a powerful tool. It will help you articulate it to yourself and to other people. This will help you refine and make more of it.

The truly great creatives I’ve run into in business or in art can all do this incredibly well. They can look at a painting, a pitch deck, a product, or a novel and reel off exactly what they like and why.

Articulating what you like is the only way to make great stuff. And it’s a skill that can be learned. Interestingly, it’s one of the things that AI is great at teaching. (We’ll get to the AI a little later, though.) 

The place to start when you’re trying to develop taste is to find and record the things you like.

Gathering your ingredients

Finding things you like is like panning for gold.

What you read, what you hear, what you do, what you see—it all rushes past you like mud and icy water in a rocky creek. Your task is to scoop it into a pan. Shake, sort, and stratify what you find. Save the bits that sparkle.

This is where a notebook comes in handy. You don’t need anything fancy; after all, it was California gold prospectors who first wore rough Levi’s.

For years, I’ve kept a note in the Notes app on my phone for this purpose. I call it my Ineffable List. These are sentences, quotes, and images that have that thing. Whatever it is that I like, but cannot express. As if there is some part of my brain that controls what I like, but that is not hooked up to my Broca’s area: