Welcome back to our Personality & Pacemaker series where we explore the ways that personality may affect the writing process. We last looked at the self-focused, emotionally-intense, and inauthenticity-phobic Enneagram Type Four: The Individualist/Romantic. If you’d like to join us as we continue on this amazing journey and get to know yourself a little better along the way, feel free to take the Enneagram personality test! Once you know what your personality type is, let us know how you use Pacemaker and how you think your personality influences your Pacemakerplan customizations! Let’s jump in!
Your Personality- Type 5- The Investigator/Observer
If you’re looking for surface-dwellers, or people who sacrifice depth for breadth, look elsewhere! Enneagram Type Fives cerebrally spelunk their way through life’s caverns, not satisfied to just know the what of things, but hungry for the how and why of things. In other words, people who have the Enneagram Five personality type engage with the world primarily internally, seeking understanding and collecting knowledge where others might collect experiences or trust the word of others.
The most introverted of all the Enneagram personality types, they are referred to as Observers as well as Investigators because they prefer to conduct their explorations inside their own heads, and away from the noise and courts of public opinion.
Beneath the surface of these non-surface dwellers, however, is a deep rooted insecurity about their ability to function in the world. In what may seem like an ironic twist, instead of confronting this sense of insufficiency through action and lived experience, Fives retreat into their minds to observe, contemplate, analyze and refine their understanding. This stems from a deep desire to be competent, and an equally deep fear of being incompetent or incapable.
According to the Enneagram Institute, “…for their own security and self-esteem, Fives need to have at least one area in which they have a degree of expertise that will allow them to feel capable and connected with the world. Fives think, “I am going to find something that I can do really well, and then I will be able to meet the challenges of life. But I can’t have other things distracting me or getting in the way.” They therefore develop an intense focus on whatever they can master and feel secure about.”
The challenge is that this internal deep-dive has no natural stopping point. Their tenacious curiosity can draw them deeper and deeper into every crack and crevice of knowledge’s caverns, to the extent that they risk becoming stuck there. When this happens, they might never resurface, and what they’ve learned may not translate into action or impact, remaining stored rather than expressed.
Moreover, Type Fives can feel like they have limited emotional and social resources and anticipate that the ordinary, regular demands of a social life would deplete them beyond what feels sustainable. This can result in varying degrees of separation from social life. While they may feel like they are simply being selective about where and how they engage with people and the world, to other people, even ‘close’ friends and family, this could feel like a tendency to withdraw and isolate.
So while this stockpiling of knowledge can create a sense of confidence, it can also reinforce the very distance they feel from the world they’re trying to understand.
How it may be affecting your writing process
For most, if not all, writers, the writing process doesn’t actually begin with writing. Behind every word actually written in draft, there lie waves of ideating. This is doubly true for Type Fives who spend significant time thinking, researching, and mentally mapping out ideas before ever drafting a single sentence. By the time they do begin writing, they usually have a deep and nuanced understanding of their subject. On top of this, depth and personal understanding are prioritized over output, so rather than skimming across multiple ideas, Fives prefer to explore one concept fully, refining and interrogating it as they go.
Their writing process is also rarely steady. Instead, Type Fives often work in intense bursts of focus, immersing themselves completely in a project for hours, or even days, at a time! During these periods, they can make significant progress, but these bursts are often followed by stretches of withdrawal, where they step back to recharge and recover some of that expended energy. This stop-start rhythm can make it challenging to build consistency or meet ongoing deadlines.
Type Fives can also be exceptionally reluctant to share their work before it feels fully formed. They tend to hold back drafts until they believe they’ve reached a certain level of clarity or mastery, avoiding early feedback on ideas that still feel incomplete.
While the compounding effect of all the above is usually work that feels thoughtful, intellectually engaging, and certainly well researched, it can mean a slow start to the actual writing, slow progress, and difficulty maintaining momentum. In practice, this may show up as mounting pressure from external expectations (such as editors or deadlines) to deliver drafts and completed work on a timeline that doesn’t always align with their natural process, delaying collaboration, feedback and in some cases, completion itself.
Pacemaker can help!
The Type Five mind craves autonomy and order, to push back against the unrelenting waves of external demands and chaos of a disordered world, and to provide themselves with a controlled environment to grow in competence without being depleted of their internal resources.
The reason Pacemaker might be a good fit for Type Five writers is that many of our free and Premium features and functionality already align with the way the Type Five mind works! Our features provide structure for the chaos, flexibility on one’s own terms, a wide scope to give each of one’s plans its own space to be fully explored, and the privacy to preserve independence and avoid premature exposure.
For Pacemaker Free users, we think Type Fives might particularly enjoy the following functionality:
Customizable Plans and Adjust-as-You-Go Flexibility
Type Fives resist rigid systems that put demands on their time and make them feel boxed in, but they love adaptable ones! The ability to tweak plans, shift pacing, and recalibrate targets on Pacemaker will give Type Fives the structure they desire without feeling controlled. Being able to design processes that make sense to them in turn makes it far more likely they’ll stick with their plans long-term.
Whether it’s steady progress, lighter weekends, uneven workloads, or reserving some buffer days at the end just in case, Type Fives can benefit from being able to shape their writing schedules around their energy. This flexibility allows them to work intensely when they’re engaged, step back when they need to, and adjust their plan when they’ve done more or less than scheduled, without feeling like they’re failing or falling short.
Progress Visualizations (Graphs, Calendars, Tables)
Type Fives are data-oriented, and seeing their progress mapped out visually appeals to their analytical nature and gives them a quiet, internal sense of progress. Where other writers may need or want to rely on external validation from others, Type Fives are comfortable using more objectively verifiable measures to confirm to themselves that they are progressing well.
Templates
Of particular utility might be our Reusable Template feature. Once a plan has been tweaked to perfection and all the modifiers have been adjusted just-so, it can be saved and reused, allowing the Type Five writer to preserve an efficient, repeatable process without having to start over from scratch each time.
Across our Premium offerings, our Type Five writers will be able to enjoy unlimited plans and projects, a unified calendar to view all their plans at a glance in one place, and the ability to make their plans private!
Unlimited Plans & Projects
For Type Fives, the ability to create unlimited plans and organize them into larger Projects offers the freedom to think in systems without losing structure. Rather than forcing an entire body of work into a single, linear plan, they can compartmentalize (something they are naturally quite good at doing!), breaking a complex project into distinct, manageable parts, each with its own logic, pacing, and focus. For example, they might want to have their novel separated into drafting, revisions, research threads, or even individual arcs, all housed within their own plans while still contributing to a cohesive whole. This allows Type Fives to engage deeply with each component without becoming overwhelmed by the totality of the project. At the same time, Projects maintain visibility across everything, so nothing feels fragmented or disconnected. The result is a planning environment that mirrors how Type Fives naturally process information!
Unified Calendar View
So much of the Type Five’s planning is held internally that having the ability to migrate that outwardly could not only open up considerable mental real estate for other more creative pursuits, but could also help them move from abstract thinking into concrete action. With Pacemaker Premium’s Unified Calendar view, all plans are visible at a glance, so instead of having to hold multiple timelines and plans mentally, Type Fives can see everything laid out in one place.
There are SO many more features on Pacemaker that seem well suited to supporting the Type Five writer in their work, but don’t take our word for it! The best way, as always, is to get your hands on the tool and experience it for yourself!
Next, we will dive into the personality and possible Pacemaker experience of the Enneagram Type Six: The Loyalist/Skeptic. If you’d like to join us on this journey but don’t know what your personality type is, take the test! There are tons of places online where the test can be taken for free, here’s one we recommend. The key is to be totally honest with your answers. Don’t answer from the perspective of your ideal self, answer truthfully from the perspective of where you are now. Your result should feel eerily accurate and personal!
If you want to just dive into the Types for yourself, you can do so here or here or any of the other thousands of places online where the Enneagram is being shared!
HUGE DISCLAIMER: we are not psychologists or therapists or certified Enneagram Coaches e.t.c., and in no way is anything we write in this series to be taken as medical advice. Any information provided in this series is for informational purposes only!