Satisficing

When I was studying technical writing as an undergraduate we learned about satisficing--the tendency for readers and users of technologies to do, read, or learn just enough to perform a task satisfactorily. I've been thinking about this mainly because I'm getting ready to send my book manuscript to a publisher for review, and I'm trying to decide whether I'm being really thorough or whether I'm satisficing. I've read through the whole thing twice in the last week, once for substantive editing and once for proofreading. I'm so sick of the whole thing that I'd love just to send it out tomorrow. But part of me feels like I should read through it one more time, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. I think I should satisfice, though.

But I wonder how people to decide when to satisfice. In other words, when do you say enough is enough? Here are some examples from today's news:

• Researchers have succeeded in reawakening a severely brain-damaged person through an experimental form of surgery. The guy had been in a "minimally conscious" state for 6 years, and now he can feed himself and communicate with others. Had the doctors and scientists decided to satisfice, they would probably have figured they were doing what they can, and this guy would've stayed in his minimally conscious state forever.
  
• CNN just showed a graphic indicating that the nation's roads and bridges have received very poor grades in the past. Problems with the Interstate 35W bridge in Minnesota had been identified in 2001, according to a CNN report: "Two reports published since 2001 pointed to structural problems with the Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed Wednesday into the Mississippi River, but both reports determined the bridge was safe despite deficiencies." In other words, people were satisficing, assuming that the bridge was in good enough shape despite the structural problems.
  

But clearly, we have to satisfice sometimes, right? Otherwise we'd never get anything done. We'd be mired in miniscule details of everything, from the blueberries in our cereal (do I go through and pick out the stems?) to our work (Do I keep working for 14 hours just to make sure everything is perfect)? It seems like satisficing has to do with the rhetorical concept of kairos, or right timing--it's a sense you get of when you should keep working and when you should stop. But it's pretty hard to know whether you are stopping out of satisfaction with the job or out of laziness.

As an aside, I'm betting technical communication experts will be looking pretty carefully at the reports about the bridge problem. As was the case with the Columbia and the Challenger disasters, there are communication as well as engineering/structural problems at stake here.