You kinda need to know that person to begin with, even just a little bit. For me i’ll just ask mutual friend for idea, or pool together to get better gift.

For friends and family try listen to their problems/annoyances. Usually people tend to complain until they fix it by themselves and if not, it’s your chance to shine.

If you want to contribute something to a hobby, ask first or gift cash. Most of the time the gift will be not needed or already surpassed with better/more expensive gear.

I only buy gifts for my SO and and it’s either one from the wishlist she has provided me or something I’ve heard her talking about and I had the foresight to write it up for later.

Pay attention to the things they enjoy, the fashion they wear, and the problems they complain about. Any of these can be a good gift inspiration.

If you don’t know the person very well, a consumable gift like wine or chocolate is a good standby.

My target for a gift is something they want but wouldn’t buy themselves. Fancy consumables fit nicely within this, but the best gift I’ve gotten someone recently is the fancy water boiler I got my husband a few months after we started dating: it’s gooseneck, can be set to heat to or sit and hold at: 60, 70, 80, 90, or 100* C, and it’s very quick. It’s not a brand that would be recommended in coffee enthusiast communities (which is fair, I looked for like the 40th percentile on price- we had just started dating!), but it’s a positive influence on his daily life.

I got it, because he had a functional but slightly damaged water cooker. If you held it the right way, it was fine, but if you just grabbed it, you’d get an unpleasant but not harmful steam burn. That’s the kind of thing that he’s never going to replace himself (I like that about him), but it adds a little drudgery to your life.

I would suggest you look for the missing stair in peoples lives, because honestly, is it worth 50-75€ (I don’t remember exactly, but I wouldn’t have spent more) to have a 1/6 chance of burning yourself slightly (just enough to jerk and make it hard to maintain control over the kettle, but not enough to actually cause a burn most of the time) every day? For almost anyone who has their basic needs met, probably not, but fuck if I’d ever get myself so expensive a water cooker.

For people who are better off, that’s not as likely to work, because they have fewer friction points in their daily lives, so you can look for something that’s more of a frivolous treat. My sisters and I are slowly gifting my dad and stepmom an orchard. They have a lot of land and they love gardening, but they wouldn’t have bought themselves (so far): apple, pear, quince(uncommon here, but they bake a lot and make their own jam), peach, apricot, plum, lemon, lime, key lime, and grapefruit trees. We don’t do it for every gift occasion, because that would ruin the surprise. In between, we get them tickets to baseball games (they’re on opposite sides of a regional rivalry, and they live within day trip distance of the two home cities) or do individual presents (my dad goes nuts for high percentage dark chocolate and my stepmom likes pop science books about flowers or birds, but I think I need to start branching out a bit more for her).

I used to almost always get people books, but most working people or those raising children don’t have a lot of time to sit and read something that they didn’t pick themselves. My sister in law (we’re not really close, but I think we’d both like to be, she’s just super busy and we haven’t spent much time together, plus we met about a year and a half ago) got me a book for Christmas, and though it was either very insightful or a lucky guess and it’s exactly my taste, I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet, because I’m in grad school and working.

She also got me the best hand cream I’ve ever used, so that’s also a good option. Actually, now that I think about it, she got me a great present last year too. She got me a very fancy candle/lotion/room scent/body scrub set, which is whatever (I would normally hate this kind of present, but it’s really nice, though I don’t think I’ll ever use the scrub), but she included two or three cookie cutters in traditional German New Years shapes. For context, I just moved to Germany a few years ago and I’m studying to be a German teacher for new immigrants, so an aspect of German culture is sweet to include. I only learned this past December (my husband never thought to mention it, until we came across a big selection of cookie cutters) that it’s a tradition in his family to give each other weird shaped cookie cutters, so I feel like she was essentially welcoming me to the family with the gift. I almost cried in the department store, because I was so touched, but I felt weird texting her about it almost a year later, so instead, we got her and her husband a small and large paw print cookie cutter (we’ve all got pets and she was pregnant, but they were wary of celebrating too early because they’d struggled for so long), which I hope was well received.

I would classify the cookie cutters from my SiL as the best kind of gift because it represented both of us, but that’s not something that’s always doable or appropriate. And sometimes a subtle one like that gets missed for nearly a year.

If the person you want to give a gift to is a weightlifter or work out enthusiast, buy them a shirt.

If the shirt is too big, they will be flattered, and if the shirt is too small, they will wear it.

For the last several decades now I have asked my wife or others “guess what I got you for Christmas?” (Birthday or whatever…).

The first thing they guess is the real thing they want as a gift.

Usually I think about what they like and what problems they have going on. Like one person in my life commented on being cold a lot, likes cats, so I got her a nice blanket that has a giant cat on it. Not mind blowing or anything, but it shows I was listening. She loves it.

I tell people don’t try to buy me anything technical. Like I’ve been thinking of getting a 4k monitor, but I’ll do an excessive amount of research before buying one. If someone else got me one and it wasn’t right for some reason, I’d feel terrible.

I keep lists on my phone, in Trello. Whenever I think a thought like “they could use X” or if they mention something they like or want, I write it down as a card before I forget.

I listen.

Depends of my relationship with them.

If they are not my close friends or family, something generic like wine, nice tea, chocolate, baby plant is fine.

If they are close to me, I love giving them something I know they can use for their favorite activity or hobbie but never related to their job or school. For example I would not gift my kid something for school, that is a need and bot an actual gift.

Just ask them. Seriously. Don’t overcomplicate things.

I become them. I absorb everything I know about them and create a simulation of them in my mind. I run this simulation through activities i’m aware of them partaking in, trying to include their current possessions in the simulation, and try to estimate how they would be feeling in the simulations as I introduce likely gifts to their routine.

When possible use past conversations and observations as rails for these simulations to keep them constrained to good gift ranges.

As an example of this technique in action every year at birthday and christmas time I’ll run through a little simulation of my partners day in my head, like they wake up and turn on the light and then go in the bathroom turning on the coffee maker on the way and then brush their teeth and then make some coffee etc. just going through each step i’m aware of and looking for opportunities to reduce friction or inject happiness. The most recent gift using this method was a bento style lunchbox. I had simulated from our conversations and observations that her lunch was sometimes at her desk and sometimes in her car so the surface could be quite variable. I thought that instead of trying to deal with a bag full of small containers in the car that it would be easier to work with a single more stable compartmented container. I also suspected she might eat more variety if it was all available at once instead of having to sort through different containers.

This was a wild success and she’s thanked me multiple times for the bento style lunchbox. Well i got that by simulating her, it’s an effective method for picking out gifts I have a good success rate!

I ask them to use wishthis.online (FOSS)

I don’t. And usually they don’t either.

I would greatly prefer the no gifts option both ways.

To add to what others have said…when you know a little about the person/their likes or dislikes, ChatGPT can be a good starting point. Don’t provide any personal info, but ask if for gift ideas based on the criteria for that person. It might just spark an idea you wouldn’t have thought of. :)