Details and Being Geeky
I really like how Marco Arment put it on one episode of Build and Analyze a few months ago. He defined being a geek as caring about a set of topics much more deeply than the average person. I truly identify with that: to care for details that most pass over. There are a ton of little things that I am passionately worried about getting right. Things like what type of lead I’m using in my mechanical pencil to aligning the staple on my problem sets. From the format I use to write my notes for my physics and astro classes to finding the right knot to tie my shoe laces. I analyze and critique mentally almost every user interface I encounter. I have a favorite sans-serif font (Futura), a favorite serif font (Baskerville), and a monospace font that I like a lot but not quite enough to make it a favorite yet (Inconsolata). I’ve switched away from some pretty good applications because their icons bothered me. And I’m typing this out on a text editor I greatly love (TextMate).
To me being selective about many things isn’t really a burden. Amazingly enough, I think it actually helps open up my mind. I don’t, and cannot, care about everything. There are simply too many things and ideas to be immersed in. For that reason, I love learning about what other people are interested in. When others care about something else deeply, it is always fascinating. To see what the finer details that they have chosen to focus on, and the values that they have decided to embrace.
In the past few days, I’ve also started wondering about what is it exactly that makes me want to get absorbed in the smaller details. The best answer I’ve been able to come up with is that I like seeing how things work. I want to learn about how everything in the universe around me is put together. This is one of the primary reasons why I enjoy studying astrophysics: to be able to understand how the universe functions. But I think it also plays a huge part in why I like small details. When discovering how the things in the world around me work, it’s great to be able to learn about how each of the tiny things that make a bigger component converge. What many consider to be tiny components, like choosing the right frequency for a sleep indicator on a laptop or finding the correct source of pressure to hold up a star, ultimately add up to compose something bigger: a product that can be even more elegant and functional than all of its components combined.
