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 not an actual gift.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.