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By Root 627 0

this irritating question from earlier? I tried to prepare you for it. It seems like a basic question, but even though a poor, lost Nerd might feel crappy about his life, he will nonetheless shrug his shoulders when you pose it. KNOW THIS, young slayer: You can’t get things unless you know what those things are to begin with. Aha! This is where writing shit down comes into play. Go to the drugstore and buy one of those cheap graph paper notebooks. Graph paper is fun because it’s gridded, and in addition to notes, it’s great for making geometric wonder sketches and dot-based games, for you folks who enjoy margin doodling as much as I do. ALSO, you are literally going to make a Nerdy little map for your goals and the straight lines and 90-degree angles will be helpful. Making hierarchical lists is OK, too, but quickly sketching out a graphical representation of what you want and how to get there is much more sticky to the brain, I think. Notice how computers aren’t text based anymore? Because the GUI (graphical user interface) that Apple borrowed for free from Star, the Xerox 8010 Information System, to make the Lisa in 1983 is much easier for the user and more engaging.

NERD MAPPING!!!

OK, you have your $2 graph notebook. Henceforth it shall be known as your Character Tome, just because. I like to draw on mine and slap stickers on the cover—like some kind of crazy old scientist’s journal. Did you figure out what you want yet? If not, start making lists of things you want and things you’d like to do. If your brain feels soupy, it may be because you’ve been carrying around too much crap in it so it’s important to pull that out onto the paper and into the physical world. (If you’re a fan of David Allen’s GTD routine, this will be familiar.) Once you have a list of things you want—some might be short-term goals and others long term—order them by level of difficulty, that is, how hard you think it will be to acquire them. Then draw a line around one row of cells from the left to right X axes on the graph paper. Every few cells, make a vertical notch and over each of the notches write the things you want to achieve in order of difficulty from easiest to hardest. Art time! Over those words, draw little representations of each thing. It’s fun, and pictures will resonate more with your molecules than words. This will be your overall game map. You can always adjust the goal points later, but this will give you a good place to start. Over the whole thing write a time frame. It can be any amount of time, but putting yourself on the clock to achieve this series of goals is the key. (See examples at NerdistWay.com)

Now, take each individual goal that you notched and make the same long, horizontal single-cell rectangle. These long boxes will become your Progress Bars. Under each goal-related Progress Bar, write as many steps as you can think of that will move you toward this goal, no matter how small. As you complete each one of these steps, color in your Progress Bar a little bit more until it’s full, which would indicate the completion of your goal! As you complete each goal, you will begin to fill in the cells on your OVERALL Progress Bar that you made first. It sounds screwy but it makes sense if you see it in action, so go to Nerdist Way.com for a demonstration of this madness.

CHARACTER PAGE

When you play any of the pen-and-paper RPGs, the very first thing you have to do is “roll your character,” which means throwing a bunch of dice to determine how attractive, smart, or smelly your character is. Then you write all of that down on a template so you have a quick character reference. I think this is PERFECT for life. You’re going to make a Character Page where you are the character. First of all, you won’t have to roll any dice. You’ll only have to fill in a few values after an honest assessment of your traits. While we are all very complex beings, it is very freeing to condense yourself into a handful of attributes that will give you not only a much better sense of who you are, but also a convenient reference point to