If you have laser-like brain it's not always focused on the most productive things. If you want to play Halo: Reach all day, that's fine, but if you want to accomplish some other things, here are some ways to do that using your innate nerd gifts.

I categorize nerds as creative-obsessive. A lot of nerds are creative people who obsess almost unnaturally over the minutiae of things.

In the '90s, you couldn't say the word 'nerd' to someone when pitching a show. They would have considered that too niche and wouldn't have listened.

When comedians get successful, the fans that they have aren't the fans they would hang out with. I don't have that problem.

When you look at your freelance career, it's really like a mall. And if you look at a mall, it's a self-contained system that has a flow and logic to it. You'll probably have one or two really bigger jobs, those are like your anchor stores.

Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.

Twitter is really a hyper-distilled version of how the internet should work - short bursts of relatively useful information.