The Nerd Handbook

Excellent post over at Rands in Response about understanding the nerd mentality:

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

Guilty.

Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head. It’s the end of the day and you and your nerd are hanging out on the couch. The TV is off. There isn’t a computer anywhere nearby and you’re giving your nerd the daily debrief. “Spent an hour at the post office trying to ship that package to your mom, and then I went down to that bistro — you know — the one next the flower shop, and it’s closed. Can you believe that?”

And your nerd says, “Cool”.

Cool? What’s cool? The business closing? The package? How is any of it cool? None of it’s cool. Actually, all of it might be cool, but your nerd doesn’t believe any of what you’re saying is relevant. This is what he heard, “Spent an hour at the post office blah blah blah…”

You can be rightfully pissed off by this behavior — it’s simply rude — but seriously, I’m trying to help here. Your nerd’s insatiable quest for information and The High has tweaked his brain in an interesting way. For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about. Expect active involvement from your nerd when you trip the relevance flag. If you trip the irrelevance flag, look for verbal punctuation announcing his judgment of irrelevance. It’s the word your nerd says when he’s not listening and it’s always the same. My word is “Cool”, and when you hear “Cool”, I’m not listening.

No comment, other than to say my preferred response is “OK” rather than “cool.”

posted by Nicholas ⋅ tagged geek, nerd, productivity, random thinking

One response to “The Nerd Handbook”

1. November 12th, 2007 at 11:52 pm , Sra. Bibliotecaria says:
   

   I don’t disagree with most of this, but your excerpt seems to elide a rather important point: The narrowness of the relevancy filter.

   Maybe I’m prejudiced because my own relevancy filter is wide-open and omnivorous, but what is frustrating to me in relationships with geeks is that their relevancy filters can be strong eough to screen out information that is going to be very relevant indeed fifteen minutes from now. Or to another human being for whom they are responsible (say, a child or elderly parent).

   In other words, it looks a lot like privilege, and can extend to selfishness.