A small gift can be precise enough to feel unusually large.

What makes a gift land is accuracy rather than size. Something inexpensive that fits a person exactly proves you were paying attention on an ordinary day, and that attention is the actual present. Expensive and general is easy to arrange and says much less, which is why people remember the tiny well-chosen thing for years and forget the generous vague one.

Keep a note somewhere of what people mention in passing: a book they want, a thing they have run out of, a place they miss. When an occasion comes, you will not have to guess, and the guessing was never the valuable part.