CNBC.COM
Unlike most Americans, Marsai Martin started working a steady job — as a child actor — at age 9.
Martin, now 21, co-starred in ABC's television show "Black-ish" from ages 9 to 18. The experience of joining a workforce so young warped her perception of what success looked and felt like, she tells CNBC Make It. She only recently started to include her own health and happiness as part of the equation, she adds.
"I thought that success was one of those things where you're always running ... and you get no sleep, and that's success because you're working all the time," says Martin, who partnered with fintech company Chime's "Mama I Made It" YouTube series on August 27 for financial awareness. "You're busy and you can't eat because you're always moving around."
She spent her teenage years trying to emulate the behavior of the ultra-busy adults around her, she says. She made sure her planner was always full, blocking out time for practicing her lines, staying up-to-date on the entertainment business' news and journaling everything that came to mind — anything to make sure she was staying busy, a spokesperson says.
Martin even added activities like brushing her teeth or taking her daily vitamins to her calendar, so she could feel like she had a schedule to manage, the spokesperson added.
But Martin didn't feel successful, she says. Rather, she felt drained and unfulfilled. "I was like, I don't like this at all. I'm not happy," she says, adding that she was "constantly questioning: 'Is this my life? Is this what I have to do?'"
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There's a difference between occupying your time with projects you love, or work that challenges you, and over-packing your schedule to the point of burnout. Plenty of seemingly successful people have learned this the hard way, from Bill Gates to Beyoncé.
As Martin grew out of her teenage years, her definition of success expanded to include finding happiness, learning new skills and nurturing her financial and mental health, she says. That's a generally healthy evolution, some experts say: You should always balance your career ambitions with your health and happiness, Peloton vice president of fitness programming Robin Arzón said on a March 2024 episode of Wharton psychologist Adam Grant's "ReThinking" podcast.
"Hustle requires the confidence to define what the ladder looks like, what the definition of success looks like," said Arzón. "And my definition of success includes my own self-care practices ... I've long understood my own energy to be a currency, and I think about how I'm spending it or saving it very much how somebody might think about their finances."
If you work a standard 9-to-5 job, try treating your weekends like a vacation, author and happiness researcher Cassie Holmes advised the "Everyday Better with Leah Smart" podcast in a November 2024 episode.
Take a pottery class, relax on the beach, go on a nature walk — do whatever relaxes and recharges you that you usually don't have time for. "Some people are like, well [the weekend] is when I get my chores done," said Holmes. "Why don't you carve out Saturday? And then Sunday, you can do all the stuff that you have to do."
When your career dictates how successful you think you are, your identity and self-worth can become reliant on your job, entrepreneur and bestselling author Tim Ferriss told CNBC Make It in June. Finding new interests that you can practice regularly can give you a renewed sense of purpose and boost your mental health, he said.
"It just needs to be consistent. Like, a couple times a week — one time a week, even — so that you have some type of way to make progress in an area that is not your primary lane," said Ferriss.
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