Behavior Persona:
Workieholic is a work-oriented student who selectively responds. He is committed to work tasks and responds to anything work related as soon as possible but treats social tasks as secondary, usually unaware of how long he is delaying social messages, but does eventually get to them too (365 days later yikes!). He mentally categorizes all incoming messages/emails etc as “work” vs “social,” and prioritises urgency of responsiveness accordingly.
Key Behavior: Workieholic avoids his social obligations because he sees them as optional and not necessarily time sensitive (compared to work related obligations) which shows that his avoidance is intentional and priority driven.
My character that I drew (inspired from anxiety in Inside Me 2 with how hoch potch and all over the place Workieholic is):
| Name | Workieholic (Mr. Only Cares About Work) |
| Activated Role | Work-oriented Computer Science Teaching Assistant student who simultaneously also manages internships, leadership roles and side projects. |
| Goal | Keep everything moving forward without dropping any important responsibility or disappointing people ‘who matter’. |
| Motivation | He wants to be reliable and competent. Highly values outcomes and impact. Protects time and mental energy carefully based on the stakes they hold. Prioritizes tasks that have more significant consequences. |
| Conflict | Workieholic evaluates every message or inbox based on perceived stakes rather than effort. Work, deadline or outcome based tasks feel urgent and get handled immediately while casual or social replies feel flexible and get postponed. Because these low-stakes messages lack clear deadlines, they continue to lose to higher-priority work, piling up into backlogs that create guilt and make responding feel increasingly overwhelming, continuing a cycle of avoidance. |
| Attempts to Solve | Scrolls through ALL notifications first to ‘process everything’, but gets overwhelmed and ends up replying only to the high stakes ones. Tells himself that he’ll respond to the low stakes ones later when less busy but that time never comes. |
| Setting/ Environment | Often finds himself locked away in his room grinding on one thing or the other. Prefers to lock in his room so as to avoid running into anyone at other places like the library and having to waste time socialising. Constantly in classes, sections, or meetings (lots. of. meetings.) |
| Tools | iPhone notifications from iMessage, WhatsApp, Email, Outlook, LInkedIn and Slack/Discord. Tools to prioritize responding to high-stakes inboxes are CoDa, archiving everything else on Outlook/Gmail inbox and only having the important emails show, and Calendar blocks. Pins important chats on imessage to make sure to respond to people high on his priority list (best friend etc). Recently tried using Claude code to run on his imessage and emails to give him a comprehensive list of all to-dos instead of him having to do it manually which has saved him a lot of time. |
| Skills |
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| Routines |
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| Habits |
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Journey Map:
| Notification Received | Stakes Evaluation
(Urgent vs Flexible) |
Deferral Decision | Backlog & Catch-Up | |
| Think | In the morning wakes up and thinks about the long day ahead, so much work, so many meetings and tasks | Is this a work task or something social (and thus optional) | I think I will respond to my friend for dinner later as I’m not sure if I have time for it. | Think I’m forgetting something but I just can’t remember what. I do have all of my to-do items checked off… |
| Feel | Feels overwhelmed and stressed | I’m already so stressed and don’t feel like being responsive to non-urgent things. | Feel guilty for ghosting friends but also stressed about the meeting you have with a CEO of a company that you need to prepare for. | Feel like they’re forgetting something but also so exhausted. |
| Do | Checks all notifications first by glancing over them on all platforms (email, outlook, linkedin, imessage) | I will read through all my inboxes just to get a general sense of how many important tasks I have. | I forget about everything else and hyper focus on preparing for the meeting. | I just am too exhausted to even socialize at this point so I’ll just chill and unwind. |
| Hears
(Internal) |
Internal urgency to get up get ready for the day and respond to the work-related ones | Internal urgency to respond to a few important emails. | I should also respond to my friend but…oh wait fudge! I have that pset due tonight too. | But maybe I should answer my friend’s call? What if it’s urgent? |
| Cognitive Effort | Medium but stressed and overwhelmed | High as I need to figure out what needs responding asap and what doesn’t. | High as now my mind is on auto-mode (work after work after work). | Battle between being a good friend or prioritising your health. |
| Pain Points | Battle between responding to all texts or just the ‘important ones’ | Making those trade-offs is emotionally exhausting as choosing to respond to someone later comes with guilt. | Guilt for not prioritising friendships etc. | Feels shame and guilt. |
