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If something is worth doing for free, it’s worth doing nerd-out obsessively-compulsively for free. “Free” implies the purest kind of surplus leisure energy. It should be unshackled from ordinary ROI thinking. You’ve *already* accepted zero returns. So why hold back?
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I don’t mean doing it with excellence. Excellence only applies to non-free things. It’s a point on a price performance curve. True free things (not free samples or loss leaders or freemium or charity) don’t belong on that curve. Nerd-OCD = qualitatively absurd level of caring.
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Anybody who would only do something comparable for money should react like “I wouldn’t put that much effort into this if I were being paid a million dollars” Money cannot but nerd-OCD levels of caring about a thing. In fact it will discourage it. You’d be caring too much.
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Note that we’re NOT talking talent, genius, or exceptional intelligence being inputs. Only demented, quixotic levels of caring, and irrationally absurd levels of time/attention investment but with perfectly ordinary abilities.
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This is why most examples are from things like fan theories or hobby projects. Domains where talent is not expected, ROI-logic is suspended by default, and the work is its own reward. Labor of love stuff, but love is the wrong word.
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Psychologically what’s going on is that you’ve triggered a network effect in your head that generates seemingly limitless reserves of attention and engagement with the subject. That’s nerd-OCD. You become a perpetual motion machine of sorts.
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The Greeks called it “nerdos” and feared it. It’s where we get the word “nerd.” 🤓 They feared it because they knew it was more powerful than “thymos” and will-to-power 😎 That’s why they tried to ban it. Nerdos was viewed as devil energy in the Middle Ages.
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