Meet Wince, the Working Professional. Wunc is your everyday office worker who spends their day grinding out spreadsheets and slide decks. Wince often finds themselves either working for hours straight on end, or losing track of time during their breaks because they got too absorbed in their phone. The former leaves Wunc feeling burnt out, and the latter leaves Wunc feeling overwhelmed once they eventually get back to work. Their problem is one of effective time management, wherein Wunc needs time to get their work done but also time to take a pause to rest and recuperate. Ultimately, Wunc wants to maintain a healthy working relationship where they can lock in when they need to and take a break when they need to.
The persona below outlines the tension that Wunc feels throughout the workday. While they may want to take more restorative breaks, the easiest thing available is to turn to their phone, which quickly falls into time spent scrolling on social media.
| Name | Wunc (Working Unc) |
| Activated Role | Wunc is a working professional balancing long workdays and looming deadlines |
| Goal | Wunc wants to do well in their work but not get too overwhelmed and burnt out |
| Motivation | Wunc wants to maintain good work-life balance and have a healthy relationship with work so that they have time for a life outside of it |
| Conflict | Wunc is bad at taking proper breaks at work: either they do not take enough breaks and end up getting fatigued and burnt out throughout the day, or they take a moment to look at their phone, which ends up turning into a doomscrolling session |
| Attempts to Solve | They have tried the Pomodoro technique, but they end up on their phones and end up going on longer-than-anticipated breaks, and they do not feel like they can get good work done during the focus sessions.
They have also tried going for walks around the office, which has been more restorative, but it eventually became too much of a hassle, to the point where they return to stay at their desk on their phone. |
| Setting/ Environment | Wunc typically works at their office workplace during the day, where they have their own dedicated deskspace. They are surrounded by their other coworkers, who each have their own workspaces. Occasionally, Wunc may take their work on the go at a cafe or at home during remote days. |
| Tools | They use their laptop as their primary work driver, although they do occasionally use it for scrolling online.
They also use their phone to keep track of messages and keeping timers, but they often fall into doomscrolling patterns. |
| Skills | They are very good at using technology as their work requires them to be up-to-date on whatever the current tech paradigm is.
They are very good at locking in when it comes down to it, able to spend hours at a time in deep focus. |
| More | Their typical workday routine is: wake up → get ready for work → drive to work → work → lunch → work → go home → relax, unwind, etc.
Their habits include: immediately checking their phone whenever a notification comes in, just in case it’s an important work message; getting so absorbed in their work that they drown out the rest of the world; once they check their Slack or email, they are more likely to also briefly check their Twitter, or Instagram, etc. The thing that Wunc really needs help with is effective time management so that they do not feel overwhelmed with all their work if it piles up or feel burnt out if they chug through all their work in one go. They need a way to effectively break up their work to give them time to rest and recuperate. |
The journey map below follows Wunc through a typical working session where they do decide to take a break/pause in the middle of it. This journey map highlights Winch’s thoughts, attitudes, and actions to better illustrate how taking breaks during work typically goes for Wunc.
As can be seen, while Wunc does want to be productive, negative feelings towards their work results in wanting to take a break. But as it is so easy to go from checking emails to scrolling on social media, Wunc ends up taking a much longer break than anticipated, which makes getting back into work much harder. All the while, Wunc’s feelings of guilt grow, even if taking a break in the moment provides momentary relief.
