"They'll think less of me"

Behind most polishing is a forecast. If this goes out with a flaw in it, someone will notice, and they'll revise their opinion of me downwards. The forecast is rarely put into words, which helps it survive. So put it into words and check it against what you've seen.

Start with Priya's heading. "Supplier reveiw" went to the whole team, including your manager. You noticed it. Think about what you concluded. I'd bet it wasn't that Priya is careless and can't be trusted. If you thought anything, it was that she'd typed it quickly. Within a minute you were reading her figures. That's how you read other people's work, and there's no reason to think they read yours more harshly than you read theirs.

Most people at work aren't examining what you send them. They're skimming it between two other tasks, looking for the part that affects them. They want to know what it says and what they have to do. A reader in that state doesn't see the difference between your fourth draft and your ninth. Often they don't see typing mistakes either, since the eye corrects them on the way past.

Then consider what colleagues do notice, because they aren't indifferent to everything. They notice whether the thing arrived when you said it would. They notice whether they can understand it, and whether it helps them do what they need to do next. They notice who holds things up. On every one of those counts Priya's page and a half did better than your two pages, and her typing mistake cost her nothing.

So the polishing protects you against a small risk that few people would act on, and it exposes you to a larger one. Lateness is visible to everybody, while most flaws are visible to almost nobody. If your manager ever does form a private reservation about you, it's much more likely to be that your work is excellent and comes late than that there was once a comma out of place.

There's a well-known experiment that's often quoted on this, and I'll mention it with a warning. In 1966 Elliot Aronson, Ben Willerman and Joanne Floyd published a study that's usually described like this. People listened to a recording of someone doing very well in a quiz. In one version, the person then clumsily spilt coffee over himself. Listeners liked the highly able person more after the blunder, not less. I haven't been able to read the paper itself, so treat that as the standard account and not as something I've checked. I also wouldn't build on a single experiment from sixty years ago. I mention it because it points the same way as ordinary experience. People whose work is good and who are visibly human are easy to like. People whose work is flawless and who seem terrified of a slip are harder to be around.

I'm not saying nobody will ever criticise you. Some readers are picky, and a few bosses do pounce on small things. Chapter 15 deals with them. But notice that the polishing doesn't prevent criticism even then. A determined critic finds something in any document, because there's always something. You can't get to a state where nothing could be said. The forecast assumes that state exists and that one more pass will reach it.

Here's a small test you can run this week without changing anything else. The next time someone sends you work with a slip in it, watch your own reaction. Notice how long you think about the slip, and whether your opinion of them moves. Then ask why you'd expect them to react differently to you.