George Kao coaches entrepreneur Larissa on running a business while raising a 2-year-old in Pakistan. Instead of chasing joyful productivity, she needs steadiness first: predictable routines, a clear hand-off with her husband for childcare, and a deep-work block before daycare. She can hire low-cost Pakistani freelancers and use AI for overnight tasks to work smarter without burning out.
Larissa, thanks for letting me record this. And you have a— you're blessed to have a business where it brings you, you know, full-time income. And you're also a mother of a 2-year-old and you just relocated to a totally different culture. Okay. From US to Pakistan, right? Like, like you're juggling a lot. I'm now, I'm now about year 3 into moving to a different culture from US to Mexico, which is not That is different from compared to US to Pakistan. You have to deal with time zone and everything too. So I feel like it took us like 2 years at least to get settled, you know? And you're like just on that cusp right now and we're moving to year 3. So things are much more steady now, but I don't have children. So especially young children, like one young child is already like 2 full-time jobs. You know, in my experience when I've lived with my brother, when he had a young child of 1 or 2 years old. So I don't blame you at all for having to deal with a lot of context switching because a baby is like context switching. You have to be a context switching expert. Okay, now I gotta deal with— now I got— so context switching, meaning I'm working on this and now I gotta work on this other thing, or I had this interruption, is a killer of joyful productivity. You know, unless, unless The context switching is planned and in advance and predictable. Rather, the more predictable your context switches are to say, okay, I know that in an hour I'm gonna be doing this, and then 2 hours I'm gonna be doing that, 3 hours I'm gonna be doing that. It's very steady schedule. Then the context switching is your brain is already preparing for it. It knows what the day's schedule is. It's preparing for it. But whenever you have an interruption, You have to context switch and your brain gets discombobulated. And, and if you have another interruption, yes, yet another. So right now, honestly, just surviving is success for you while the baby is young. I'm, I'm serious. I mean, unless you have full-time help, right? Like, or if you're the full-time help for the baby, just surviving, meaning, and I don't mean like, you know, on the verge of giving everything up, but it's more like just getting through the day without, without, you know, freaking out or having tantrums or whatever yourself is success in my opinion, without breaking down, without like just— and so I feel like joyful productivity is not even the, the goal right now. If I were you, and I'm not, I couldn't, couldn't even relate, but it's like the goal right now is more like steadiness. It's like how can I produce steadiness in my self-regulation throughout a typical day with all the interruptions and all the stuff that I have to deal with that is often unpredictable? And it's like, if you can reach steadiness, I'm celebrating. I'm like acknowledging and honoring you to no end because having a young child is like that. It's so— I just want to encourage you to say you're probably doing great. You know, your standard right now shouldn't be joyful productivity. It should be steadiness. And the steadiness is— it's— you're—
it's—
you're, you're being Superwoman already if you can create steadiness in your life and in your work. You should really be grateful and appreciative of the— what you've created.
Hmm.
And maybe that'll bring a little bit of joy.
You know? Yeah. Can I respond?
Yeah, please do if you like.
That's helpful to hear. And something I've recently started in the past month is to— so coming, I would say, um, in the previous So before I started my business and had a child, I had a year of a sabbatical.
Yeah.
So that year plus this past bunch of time, I think it was a lot of like I wanted the freedom of setting my own schedule every single day.
Yeah.
And I relished it. I needed it.
Yes.
And what I recently realized is, okay, I actually want more structure now. I've gotten my dose of that and I want more structure to create the steadiness.
Yes.
So what I did is realize in the morning I'm just gonna get up. Yeah. Um, get my trade with my husband in terms of who's watching the baby in the morning.
Right.
Go, go get my exercise in.
Yeah.
And then the latter half of the morning is my deep work time.
There we go.
So that come and, and our baby is in daycare, but there is this feeling of like during this 6 to 7 hours while he's in daycare, like, oh, like, yeah, yeah.
You're, you're looking Looking to see if you're alert, essentially.
Yeah. So I guess there's a little bit of like, yeah, that pressure feels like it really removes the joy, but maybe that's okay.
And I think that's to be expected when this daycare place is relatively new to you. I mean, everything is relatively new right now with a 2-year-old, but it's like once the daycare has been proven in your mind that it's okay, they do a really good job, or they will let me know with enough notice whenever there's something I need to attend to or whatever, Then the steadiness can come in. But right now, I think being alert makes sense as a mom, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
But it sounds to me like you're already, you're already making headway in creating that steady structure for yourself to be able to have something more predictable.
Yeah. And so I think I'm like, oh, By the time I break for lunch, I basically like the 2 most important me things, exercise and, you know, 3 hours of deep work have been accomplished for the day. So everything is sort of downhill from there.
Right.
But I think recently realizing like sort of feeling like if I wanna make more, I feel like the business is at a plateau in terms of the revenue and feeling what I've, I don't know. Anyway, maybe this is not— anyway, my hypothesis right now is, oh, to push through the plateau, yeah, maybe I do need to put in more time. Maybe I have to try really hard to get from like 15 hours to 20 hours. Well, and then I'm like, oh, it already feels so hard to squeeze in.
No, I know, right? Well, I mean, of course there's always an opportunity to optimize the, the hours you spend at work, and of course there's always opportunity to also do more, spend more hours. But right now with a young child and new, new culture. Yeah, I, I don't blame you for not being able to carve out more hours. You should probably work, um, think about working— what is, what is working smarter might mean for you. That's probably a, a priority to like just noodle on. I don't know if you use AI tools, for example, but if you do, nowadays AI is so good that it's literally an assistant now. Like my AI does so much for me. It does stuff overnight and it brings it to me in the morning, like researching, brainstorming, whatever, posting, you know, fixing, whatever, does it overnight. You know, my computer's closed, but it wakes up the computer and then it does stuff and then it shuts and it closes again. It's amazing. So I feel like if, if you, you know, for people who, who, who don't like AI, if you can afford a human assistant to, to do these kinds of things, Pakistan, there's very, very famous for smart and low-cost freelancers. Okay, so you're there in the country, so you might be able to find some human assistant to help you that's well qualified, or, you know, and/or use AI to do that. But yeah, there probably is opportunity, obviously, to optimize and to grow by doing some research about, you know, how to get better at certain channels, or how to, you know, what other channels you should be using for growing. you know, audience and revenue, that kind of thing, or sales, you know, optimizing your sales process, etc., etc. Yeah. So I hope this is helpful, Marissa.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It is.
