I THINK MAN Y LIGHTLY ORGANIZED GEEKS “Playing blackjack properly is a test of personal suffer from an overpowering fear of tedium. It’s discipline. It takes a small amount of skill to know part of being a novelty-seeking kind of person: the right plays and count the cards, but the hard part when you get substantial amounts of pleasure from is making yourself consistently behave like a robot, uncovering new knowledge, any task where you’re rather than succumbing to your gut instincts.” not learning — where you’re just repeating — is Consistently behaving like a robot is the challenge unbearably painful to pursue. of many everyday tasks. The hard part for many

If you’re a programmer, there’s an additional level smart people is to stop thinking, and start acting as of suffering in drudgery. Doing the same thing over though you’re running a program on yourself. and over while coding, like copying and pasting the For many of us, that goes against our guttiest of same function into different functions? That’s never instincts: we feel as though we’re deliberately mak-a demonstration that you’re doing good work. ing ourselves more stupid. But as a strategy, some-It’s usually a sign that something is wrong with times you really don’t want, or need, to be smart. your code. You’re paid to remove redundancies. Many geeks use games to soften the blow. They Programmers look at a task like weeding the lawn take boring, monotonous tasks, and by turning and think, “I’ve already done this. Why can’t I wrap them into a challenging game, eke some tiny squib it in a loop, and just run that?” of enjoyment from them.

As a result, geeks often get themselves into terri- The games you play depend on your personality.
ble trouble because they cannot bear to do simple, If you’re naturally competitive, you’ll want to have
everyday tasks — like pay bills on time, or fill in a
tax form, or wash the dishes. It’s an aesthetic and Stop thinking and start
moral offense. Better, says your subconscious, to _{be bankrupt and on the run from the IRS, eating acting like you’re running}
from plastic cups and plates, than to have to do a program on yourself.
some brain-numbing piece of repetitious nonsense,
even for a moment. Death before dullness! some external measure to constantly attempt to
Imagine my surprise, then, as I researched super- beat. If you’re someone who enjoys music, match
organized geeks and I discovered how many appar- your actions to an internal, complicated rhythm.
ently mind-numbing routines they indulge in. They I’m about as competitive as anyone always picked
have scripts, sure, and little automated hoo-hahs, last in gym, and music is all bleep bleep bleep to me.
but they also perform certain repetitious actions, no But I’ve gotten through many a terrible job by tap-
matter how easy it might be to optimize them away. ping into the rich bureaucracies of science fiction and
The repetition serves to keep certain facts fresh thriller shows. Programs like CSI, Battlestar Galactica,
in their minds. Plenty of alpha geeks have a complex and Star Trek: The Next Generation gain some of their
system of repeated behaviors for filing a new docu- appeal from the occasional glimpse of their heroes
ment or creating a blog entry. Even when they keep conducting a tremendously boring task, or minions
their to-do lists on the computer, they still monkishly milling around busily in the background. This leaves
copy it out onto paper first thing in the morning. The opportunities to place you in that world, only tempo-
ritual of filing or blogging helps them remember what rarily stuck doing the dull Space Taxes Forms.
they’re saving. Copying the to-do list fixes the tasks This can work in almost any otherwise depress-
in their minds, and helps to keep the list small. ing scenario. As science fiction author Rudy Rucker
My favorite story regarding this skill is from the once said: “For me, the best thing about cyberpunk is
legendary coder John Carmack, creator of Doom that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which
and Quake. Carmack went to Las Vegas for a break used to terrify me. Now I just imagine the whole thing
and, Vegas being Vegas, decided to have a wager. is two miles below the moon’s surface, and half the
Carmack being Carmack, he beat the house. The people’s right brains have been eaten by roboticized
game he played was blackjack, and the technique steel rats. And suddenly it’s interesting again.”
he used was card counting — which lets you beat
^{the house odds as long as you persistently follow a} Learn how to reel in your mind at Danny O’Brien’s lifehacks.com
strictly defined set of rules. As he wrote: and Merlin Mann’s 43folders.com.