Use This Successful Entrepreneur's Scheduling Secret to Have Your Most Productiv

[Monirul Islam]

Kathryn Minshew is a big believer in work-life fit. While balance might not always be possible, the entrepreneur says that her mindset is all about the ways in which your career and your personal life can complement one another. It's this kind of thinking that drives her as she grows her company, The Muse.

The founder and CEO of career platform The Muse launched her business six years ago with the hope she would be able to help connect job seekers to the right companies, while adding a human touch to this often stress-inducing process.

Today, the company has a user base of more than 50 million people, with it aiming to provide all the tools people need to find new career paths -- everything from personalized job recommendations to taking a look inside at how offices look. 

The Muse also offers courses to help people boost the skills on their resumes and provides advice from the a network of more than 500 career experts.
We caught up with Minshew to ask her 20 questions and find out what makes her tick.

1. How do you start your day?
I'm a night owl. I usually start my day between 8:00 and 8:45 in the morning. I'll grab breakfast out of the fridge, possibly something I made the night before like overnight oats or chia pudding. And ideally get a good 30 to 60 minutes on my laptop before I go into the office where I can just crank out a little bit of focused work before the day fully starts. I get in around 9:30 and once I'm in the office I have a lot of things happening, meetings and calls. So, I really value the mornings as a chance to get quieter work done.

2. How do you end your day?
I tend to leave the office between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m., usually to go meet a partner, candidate or board member for drinks, or go to some sort of work-related event. I'll get home between 9 and 10 p.m.

I usually spend the next one to four hours in this chair that is like my focus chair. I love doing work late at night, because you're not getting a lot of email. So, it's much easier for me to get into a state of flow. It's not uncommon for me to be going strong until midnight or 1:00 a.m. I often need the evenings to focus, take a step back and process all of the information, to-do's and email responses and action items that need more time.

3. What's a book that changed your mind and why?
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. I love it, because among other things, it plays with the idea that the past is challenging, because you don't really what happened unless you were there.
It also deals with themes of love, relationships and history in this smart, compelling way. It broadened my perspective of what topics could go together and what similar interests person were allowed to have.

4. What's a book you always recommend and why?
I always recommend The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz to early stage entrepreneurs and people who are interested in getting into business. I think it's a useful counterpoint to some of the hype that pervades the industry. There is a lot that is incredibly exciting and inspirational about building companies, but there are also the moments where to quote Horowitz, "you eat glass and stare into the abyss."

5. What's a strategy to keep focused?
I like to list out my most important priorities either on a notepad next to my computer, on a sticky note nearby or somewhere easily accessible. I can then constantly ask myself the question of whether what I'm doing right now moves me towards those priorities.

Related: Use This Founder's Top Tip To Make Your Meetings Work For You

6. When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
An ambassador, a CIA agent or international woman of mystery. Or an aid worker. I was fascinated by international relations. I used to watch that television show Alias with Jennifer Garner, and I thought she just seemed like the coolest person I could possibly imagine.

7. What did you learn from the worst boss you ever had?
You get better work from people with love rather than fear. I worked for some incredible people and some very difficult people in my day. The worst was probably a guy who had been a former interrogator for the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]. We eventually developed a good cadence and relationship but at the beginning of our time together, he used to surprise me with very aggressive questions about work that he asked me to complete. When I would get flustered or nervous in answering him, he would think I was hiding something, when in fact I was just really thrown off that he had shown up behind me when I was knee-deep in an Excel model.

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/302553