Ask HN: How do I become a better gift giver?

Personally, for my close friends I just keep an informal page on iOS notes (or what have you) that I update with ideas I have throughout the year. Mostly, these ideas come from conversations with them, where they mention off hand something they’re really dying to get or speak about a passion they have. I try not to delete these notes and let them grow over the years I know a friend, so I have a long list of ideas to pull from whenever I want to get them something.

As a band aid solution, if you have someone or some people you want to get gifts for in the immediate future, I used ChatGPT to help generate some ideas for gifts for a friend of mine this Christmas. I just described the friend, their passions, etc and asked the AI to give me some ideas for gifts. From there, I had a good base to work off of. Taking the human element out of the act of giving something to a loved one is very 2022, anyways.

If you’re not into having a robot help you figure it out, my go-to categories for generic gifts are: cozy / comfort (eg lounge clothes, blankets, space heater), booze /wine, home decor (paintings, framed pictures, whatever).

On the topic of framed pictures, my girlfriend has this disposable camera, an old school Kodak. It’s small enough to fit in her purse so she tends to bring it out with her whenever her and I are on a date or going out with friends, whatever. She took a bunch of the photos she took over the past year and had them developed, then put together a little photo book album spanning all the stuff we did in the last year, which I found very sweet and very thoughtful. Kind of like Spotify wrapped, but less music and more pictures.