Being laid off means being free of the tyranny of someone else dictating to you how you spend your time. Instead, you get the opportunity to tyrannize yourself!
Use this time to build relative and absolute expertise. Learn new several skills to develop relative expertise. Concentrate your focus to deepen your absolute expertise.
There’s plenty to do!
Start a business
You’re not “laid off” You’re simply starting a new career as a consultant. There’s a good chance that if you have deep, extensive knowledge in your field, you will be able to find contract or consulting work.
This work can be extremely lucrative.
Often, it’s cheaper for companies to hire consultants or self-employed contractors than it is to hire employees. This is partly because overhead costs associated with employees common run 100%. That is, whatever they pay employees, it costs the company double that to retain them. As a contractor, charge your salary plus 50% and you will be lower price than an employee in most places.
Write a computer program
Programming computers is a great way to keep yourself sharp.
If you’re already a professional programmer, learn a new language. I taught myself some PHP in the WordPress system after the end of large contract job. I had the time and the money to invest in my skills, and it was fun!
If you’re not a programmer, learn to “automate” simple, boring and repetitive tasks that you find consistently important in your work. Maybe this automating mailing lists or something similar. Whatever it is, applications such as MS Office provide for automation at all levels of expertise.
Whatever kind of programming you do, consider making the source code completely open. This way, a future employer can examine your code as part of the hiring process. More importantly, with the correct open source license, a future employer can’t take your code away from you, even if the employer pays you to work on it!
Read more about filling the resume gap with programming.
Build something
That back deck you have been meaning to build? Now’s the time. Knock it out!
Volunteer
Volunteer for a mission trip, or to travel with an organization such as Engineers or Doctors Without Borders. There is no better time.
Get fit
You now have the time to get in shape. What’s holding you back? Gym memberships are not expensive compared to the value you will derive from feeling better about yourself. In fact, I bet you could make up the membership cost out of eating better food.
Help your neighbors
You now have time to actually meet your neighbors! Find out who they are. Make arrangements to throw a block party, and take on the fund raising and hosting.
If you have any elderly or special care neighbors, find out who they are and check up on them occasionally.
Write a book
Or at least an ebook.
While you may or may not make any money from writing a book, you will position yourself as an author versed in your chosen genre, whether that be Anne Rice type horror novels, or advanced user manuals for Palm hand held computers.
You can publish an ebook yourself, and either give it away or sell it using services such as E-Junkie. That’s what I did, once I learned how to really publish a blog post.
For a “real” book, printed out on paper with some sort of binding, companies such as Lulu.com provide print-on-demand services. You can print up 1, 10 or 100 copies. Or your customer can order a single printed copy whenever they want.
Start and maintain a blog
Learn to blog. Really, blogging is just writing for an audience. Your audience may just be you and your friends or family, your professional colleagues, or the world at large.
At worst, your blog will be a way to maintain a record of your activity during your time between jobs. At best, you could find a whole new career.
The “process” can be as important as the “product”
When you’re just get started on your new career direction, and you don’t yet know which way to go, keeping yourself occupied with activity that keeps your existing skills sharp and allows you to learn new skills is a no-lose proposition. What’s your alternative? Daytime TV? No thanks!
It doesn’t matter very much. What matters most is that you are keeping existing skills sharp and developing new skills. You’re essentially employing yourself productively, and that’s important.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Great points, Dave – computer programming is an excellent way to stay sharp whether employed or not.
The logic and attention to detail required are useful skills that can be put to use in a variety of settings.
Walter´s last blog ..An Update on The Three Gorges Dam
These are great tips! Luckily I don’t need them right now..
Sean´s last blog ..How To Find Out When You’re Getting Lucky
I’ve been trying to start a business doing some contracting / consulting for over 3 months now, with little success. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, I’m bad at marketing.
@Luca – Welcome back.
I’m not that good at it myself. Let’s touch base out-of-band and see what our common sticking points are.
David M. Doolin, PhD´s last blog ..Practical WordPress Tip #14: Manage a huge Draft Queue for Daily blog posting