I think you’re being a bit harsh though—the problem with personality tests and the like is not that the spectrums or clusters they point out don’t reflect any human behavior ever at all, it’s just that they assign a label to a person forever and try to sell it by self-fulfilling predictions (“Flurble type personalities are sometimes fastidious”, “OMG I AM sometimes fastidious! this test gets me”).
Professional/Auteur is a distinction slightly more specific than personality types, since it applies to how people work. It comes from the terminology of film, where directors range from hired-hands to fill a specific void in production to auteurs whose overriding priority is to produce the whole film as they envision it, whether this is convenient for the producer or not. Reading and listening to writers talk about their craft, it’s also clear that there’s a spectrum from those who embrace the commercial nature of the publishing industry and try hard to make that system work for them (by producing work in large volume, by consciously following trends, etc.) to those who care first and foremost about creating the artistic work they envisioned. In fact, meeting a deadline with something you’re not entirely satisfied with vs. inconveniencing others to hone your work to perfection is a good example of diverging behavior between the two types.
There are other things that informed my thinking like articles I’d read on entrepreneurs vs. executives, foxes vs. hedgehogs, etc.
If I wanted to make this more scientific, I would focus on that workplace behavior aspect and define specific metrics for how the individual prioritizes operational and organization concerns vs. their own preferences and vision.
Yes! Like those.
I think you’re being a bit harsh though—the problem with personality tests and the like is not that the spectrums or clusters they point out don’t reflect any human behavior ever at all, it’s just that they assign a label to a person forever and try to sell it by self-fulfilling predictions (“Flurble type personalities are sometimes fastidious”, “OMG I AM sometimes fastidious! this test gets me”).
Professional/Auteur is a distinction slightly more specific than personality types, since it applies to how people work. It comes from the terminology of film, where directors range from hired-hands to fill a specific void in production to auteurs whose overriding priority is to produce the whole film as they envision it, whether this is convenient for the producer or not. Reading and listening to writers talk about their craft, it’s also clear that there’s a spectrum from those who embrace the commercial nature of the publishing industry and try hard to make that system work for them (by producing work in large volume, by consciously following trends, etc.) to those who care first and foremost about creating the artistic work they envisioned. In fact, meeting a deadline with something you’re not entirely satisfied with vs. inconveniencing others to hone your work to perfection is a good example of diverging behavior between the two types.
There are other things that informed my thinking like articles I’d read on entrepreneurs vs. executives, foxes vs. hedgehogs, etc.
If I wanted to make this more scientific, I would focus on that workplace behavior aspect and define specific metrics for how the individual prioritizes operational and organization concerns vs. their own preferences and vision.