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I remember when I was doing my research on the personality
characteristics of technical communicators, I had felt that
conscientiousness would be very important for us - and that we should
score high in this area.
The results surprised me until I did more research into the issue. Of
220 writers from around the world, the overall rating was "average"
conscientiousness, not too high and not too low.
When we all think about this - it makes sense. The issue of when is a
document good enough to release is huge for most of us. If we wait until
its perfect - we will be waiting until 2-3 years after the product is
released. If we let the writing go too soon, the manual will not be good
enough at all (errors, poor readability, inconsistencies that contribute
to poor readability).
I learned that the issue of conscientiousness is serious for many
different careers, including ours. If someone is too conscientiousness,
they may put in too much overtime, and studies show that their work may
often be late. Interestingly, based on this definition, editors need to
be more conscientious than writers. If I recall correctly (I don't have
the data in front of me right now and I did the study a few years ago),
I believe editors did indeed have a higher conscientiousness score than
writers.
For me, good enough has always been an issue - I'm a perfectionist at
heart. But my study helped me to see this as a part of my personality,
not just a desire to be a good professional. As a result, I'm better
able to "let go" of some documents and just let them be.
<By the way, the reason I plug on this research is more to get others
thinking about it than anything else, I never had time to get a paper
together for publication, and if there are any serious researchers out
there, I'd love to be able to pass my data on to someone else so that
the research can continue - with all this hype these days about
personality types, etc., I think its time we had some hard research out
there to refer to. Also, just so you know, I don't believe we are locked
into types - I believe that understanding our "type" can be a tool to
help us know where we need to strengthen weaknesses - not an excuse to
say "that's who I am" and stay that way.>
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