Filling My Time While Unemployed

It's surprisingly easy

In March 2025, I was laid off for the first time. As part of a reorganization, the Commodity Management team was centralized from the business unit to the corporate level. My role was odd - I didn’t have a portfolio of suppliers because I was driving the productivity of the entire Commodity Management team - and so was eliminated rather than centralized.

I knew that I’d have a lot of work to do immediately, like updating my resume and shifting my job hunt from “vaguely looking” to “full-time effort”, but I expected that I’d have a lot of free time too that I’d want to fill somewhat-productively. After almost three months unemployed, I’ve been most surprised by how little free time I have.

I’ve done it to myself, but it’s still a lot.

Child care

One of the first money-saving changes we made was to pull my 1-year-old out of preschool two days a week and I would watch her at home. She still naps in the afternoon most days, but I can't do anything noisy, away from home, or unable to be interrupted. At a stroke I cut my “free” time by 25-40% (depending on how you count nap time).

In addition, because my wife knows that I’m not due for work, the “get the kids to preschool” time has shifted later by 30+minutes and I’m often pulled into preschool pickup (either for both of us to do it or just me, when previously it was normally her). These together take another 30-90 minutes out of my kid-free “workdays”.

Blogging

I’ve long had an ambition to try blogging. More recently, comments by Cory Doctorow in particular made me think about blogging as a thinking and retention tool. I started off with a three-posts-per-week schedule, but that became too difficult to sustain and I dropped to my current twice-weekly posts. They often take me about two hours per post; I’m actually increasing that time a bit by trying to get my writing done a day ahead so that it can sit and I can review it with fresh eyes before posting. Long-term, I’d like to build up a buffer of a few posts.

Job hunting and networking

Early on in my job hunt, I found myself frustrated because I couldn’t leap in as fast as I wanted. My former employer had contracted with an outplacement firm to help me with my job search and update my resume. Because the resume-update process included recorded lectures, a career coach, and some iterative meetings with the resume coach, I found myself with time where I shouldn’t be sending out a subpar resume but also was waiting on expert advice.

I finally got a resume that I’m happy with, and among my first tasks every kid-free day is to pull the most recent job postings from my target companies. Most of them provide emailed job alerts that I review as they’re sent, but for the several that don’t I have a saved tab group on my computer that loads all of them at once, as well as a couple targeted LinkedIn searches. This process is now less than an hour per day (more if I need to dig into or apply for a position) because I’m only looking at incremental changes.

The other job-hunting task I tackle is networking. At the moment, that’s reviewing lists of my contacts in my email, LinkedIn, phone contacts list, etc. and breaking them into A, B, and C categories for how connected I am with them. For example, “C” is generally recruiters on LinkedIn where I’m connected with them, but there isn’t the same friendship or professional relationship as the A and B categories.

I’ve been reaching out to my As and Bs (in no particular order) with the intent of being more social in general (a lot of reconnecting) but also to get top-of-mind for as many people as possible in case something comes up. I’m told that 70% of jobs are filled through networking rather than direct applications or recruiters. This networking can take hours until I’ve got all of my initial feelers out, after which hopefully it will take hours as I actually talk to people.

Chores and projects

In addition to my normal chores around the house, I’ve been trying to address some of the longer-term items that had been aging at the bottom of my to-do list. Among other things, I digitized some VHS tapes at my local library (note: my library can digitize VHS!), made progress on a project to convert some defunct outdoor solar lamps into a USB solar charger, and did a deep-clean of our dryer lint filter. On top of that, I finished and continue to support the Google Sheets backend to Little Babet’s Square account.

Exercise

As the weather has turned, I’ve been getting out to the local South Chagrin Reservation. Although it’s uphill from my house, I’ve been able to take advantage of my Swytch e-bike conversion kit to avoid driving. I roam around the reservation or use the fitness trail and have already seen an improvement in my ability to perform some of the tasks. Of course, having two children under 6 means that I get plenty of exercise regardless, even if most of it is the “pick up and carry 20-40 pounds” variety.

What I’m not doing

Not this

Immediately after my layoff, I expected that I’d be spending several hours per day doing job hunting and chores, but having 2-4 hours per day (maybe?) to read, watch TV, or play games. Nope! I could trade some time from any of the above tasks, but they’re all important enough to have superseded significant daytime idle time so far. 

Discussion

How are you filling your days? In particular retirees and people who are / have been unemployed, did you spend your days busy or idle? Please reach out in the comments below, at blog@saprobst.com or this page is cross-posted at LinkedIn and you can leave a comment there.