Geek or creative: which personality type are you?

I’m a self-confessed geek. My ex-wife is a creative – an actress. My daily life was once a kind of experiment in reconciling two very different ways of dealing with the world. In an experience-driven economy, the balance or choice ‘geek or creative’ may be the most important thing to get right.

Why is this important? Well, my job involves the same challenge. Writing is 50 percent technique (geek stuff) and 50 percent inspiration (creative stuff) and, according to my accountant, 10 percent arithmetic.

Geeks vs Creatives: finding balance

There’s a similar balance in programming and game design; two other areas of my life. And, perhaps, management.

I’ve written before about the difference between Looney Tunes people and Disney people and the difference between managers and entrepreneurs. And now, with love and respect to both communities and with a foot in both, here is how geeks compare to creatives.

Geeks	Creatives
Introverted	Extroverted
How?	Why?
Peers	Audience
Open source	Crowd source
Deterministic	Opportunistic
Data	Opinion
Obsession	Passion
Big Bang Theory	Louie
History	Story
Kraftwerk	Bowie
The future	The moment
Mashable	Co.Design
Android	Apple
Wired	New Yorker
The release	The performance
Implementation	Discovery
Feedback	Praise
Logic	Emotion
Look at this	Look at me
Linear	Circular
Games	Real life