One Entrepreneur's Formula For A Fulfilling Career Without Burnout

To know Minna Lee is to wonder when she has time to sleep. Her day jobs include personal trainer, nutrition coach, wellness and food blogger, and entrepreneur. (Her company, Live 24k, is an addicting blend of turmeric and collagen.) Here, the self-proclaimed "Jill of all trades" talks about how staying organized, using Sunday as a planning day, and finding inspiration in nature helps her achieve success without burnout.

Although it varies throughout the week depending on my schedule for training clients, generally a standard day begins with a 5 a.m. wake-up for clients from around 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Then the day generally goes one of two ways: It's either a day I have scheduled a cluster of meetings, events, and work errands in the city (while diving into coffee shops in between to catch up on emails) until heading back to Brooklyn around 4 p.m. to get some more work done for a few hours—or I'll be heading back home to Brooklyn right after my morning clients on select days to get started on my "desk" work. From then on until about 6:30 p.m., I try to use these days for deep work and calls.

I keep a very tidy workspace, as I really, really don't work well in clutter...which makes things a bit hard when I get about 10 shipments a week of products for work, but I never keep that stuff physically ON my desk.

My definition of productivity has definitely evolved over the years. I used to feel productive if I was constantly busy and base my level of productivity on how much I could achieve in a given day. Fast-forward to now, if I manage to get through my top three priority items in a day, have time for myself to work out, cook dinner, and catch up with my boyfriend at the end of the day? THAT is productivity to me.

Sundays are my magic day. Sure, no one loves the idea of whipping out work on the weekend, but I'll try to sit down for about an hour on Sundays to write out my agenda for the week. I highlight my urgent priorities, macro goals, and make sure my calendar is aligned because in my job, things are constantly jumping around on my calendar! After I do this, I enter the week feeling ready to work because I know exactly what to target. I often find myself overwhelmed and not as efficient if I don't take the time to do this!

This is something I'm terrible about! It's ironic because people think that working from home means time for nice home-cooked meals in the middle of the day, whereas most WFH-ers will likely tell you that it's almost harder to take a proper lunch break. So lately what I've been trying to do is wait until I find myself feeling stuck or inefficient, and I'll go either make myself some coffee or tea without touching my phone, or if I'm really having a high-stress and overwhelming day, I'll take myself for a walk around my neighborhood for about 20 minutes with some music.

A random sticky note from my boyfriend on the back of a coaster. It's cute and makes me smile knowing it's there.

In absolutely everything and anything that does NOT have to do with my work. If I'm needing inspiration for anything creative, the last thing I do is to look at social media or any kind of media, really. Instead I'll go outside to pay attention to the colors and light of nature, the characters of NYC, and architecture. If I need inspiration for my general career or mindset, I love reading books from female powerhouses I admire or watching interviews/panels online on the topics I'm struggling with.

Hmm...for this past year at least, I'm proud of my film photography work, as it was a new modality for me that helped me hone my skills as a creative entrepreneur.