15 FREE Tricks, Tips, and Tasks to complete when Unemployed

In December 2021, I found myself surprisingly unemployed one day before I went on vacation for ten days, three days before the new year. This blog is all about what to do when you are unemployed. 

If you have a job, and you just found the title of this video exciting, you can still be inspired and learn something. Maybe make your little list of things that you want to do. I had things in my mind but I just didn't have the time for, and now I do have the time for. Maybe this list will inspire you and motivate you to create a little list like that yourself. As soon as I lost my job, I was shocked, of course. I was really surprised. I got off the phone and told my husband, and then I quickly wrote down a list of things I felt. I've been in therapy for the past two and a half years, maybe three years, and thankfully, I had virtual therapy that afternoon too. I talked about what happened with my therapist, and it helped me to process things, but honestly, I was in shock. 

Yet I still needed to get it out, not sit with it and let it fester. I have a toddler. We were preparing for vacation. I needed to prepare my mind of all of this. 

A little background. When we came back, being unemployed slapped me in the face. No exaggeration. I had never been in our apartment without a job. I manage the finances for our family and now, my income column is blank. My husband and I have worked from home remotely since March 2020. We were going on two years of working remotely, and it felt bizarre to be at home and not looking at my laptop, checking my emails on my phone, finding out who's looking for me, finding out what I missed. 

I realized I wasn't going through the same routines or habits that I was doing before, and it hurt. One particular day, I was really feeling bad and I was like, 'I've been working since I was 15 years old, excluding my 1L year. of law school. Who am I right now? What can I possibly do?' I wrote down this list of 15 things that I could do while unemployed. And let me include this caveat: this is a list of free things, assuming you have wifi or a cell phone. It is really important that this is a list of free activities because when you aren't bringing in income, you don't want to start spending a lot of money. 

The first thing I could do while unemployed was play with my daughter without guilt. I say that because, as I've mentioned, my husband and I are both working from home, so we're always juggling. We got two eyes on her, one ear listening out for email notifications or reminders about meetings or all of this stuff. I was able to hang out with her during the day. I was able to sit down and watch an episode of Sesame Street and not wonder if I was missing something. because she wasn't in daycare or anything. It was just us. And I even found that I had more time and more patience with her during the day because I didn't know that as soon as she went to sleep, I had to run and do something. 

The second thing that I could do was water my plants. 

The third thing that I could do is read books that I own. This is a whole bookshelf of stuff. A lot of the books I've read before, I would say 50-50 books that I've read or books that I bought expecting to read because they looked amazing and I haven't touched them. So, I could spend time reading books that I already own. 

Alright, the fourth thing that I could do is exercise. It's not free but it's included in rent so therefore I don't need any extra money to use it. Kyla, why don't you go to the gym? Why don't you get up and move? Why don't you go do something because it's here? The gym is there, and that's one thing that I could do. 

The fifth thing I could do while unemployed is edit podcast episodes. This one's important because I currently host a podcast called the You Are A Lawyer podcast and I have episodes recorded for the next two and a half months. That is because I am very comfortable with working ahead. I prefer to work ahead. But at any given time, I'll have three episodes recorded and scheduled, and I use open source software to edit my podcast. So, it's at no extra expense to myself. 

The seventh thing that I could do while unemployed is edit my resume. I was working with that company for 9 months and before that I was working with a law firm for 5 years. I haven't needed to edit a resume in a long time. That was something that I could do while I was unemployed and tweaking my resume so that I could get another job. That probably should have been the first thing that I did once I was unemployed. 

So the eighth thing on the list of things you can do when you're unemployed, listen to audiobooks. I use an app called Libby. It's a free app that you can download, and it is for public libraries. So you enter your library card number and you can download audiobooks, ebooks. You know, if you're busy when you're working, you don't have time to listen to them. Sometimes, for me, it's better to just listen to music or something in the background, a TV show that I've seen before. 

This ninth thing is to organize my closet. I have a lot of hair products. I've been doing my hair since I was in middle school. I have a lot of conditioners, creams, all the stuff. It's all over the place. Whenever I go in there, I just tuck things on the shelf and close the door but enough with that. 

The tenth thing that I could do is continue filming for YouTube. This content originally aired as a YouTube video in March 2022 and I am working on revisiting the list. I created YouTube thumbnails back in June 2021 but I set them aside, I kept ignoring them. Well actually, I decided to learn how to do video and content editing by focusing on TikTok first, then starting YouTube (even though the platforms are drastically different!) Procrastination is the devil! so finally, I'm like, 'Kyla, you have the time. You have the time to put on lipstick, do your hair, record for YouTube, and share with the people.' I would say 

The ninth thing on the list of things to do while unemployed is finish all paid courses. I signed up for a blogging course last fall and it's by a great writer called Jon Brosio and he tells you how to write blogs that work and I finished like the first module of the course, then I got busy with all of these freelance blogging assignments that I had and I wasn't able to finish the course. But I would learn things in the module and I would immediately start implementing them and it worked. And then I was actually getting work and getting stuff picked up, and I was writing all the time. So I didn't actually finish the course, but I know the course would be incredible. 

Next on the list at number ten is outline an online course. This should not be a surprise. If I'm taking an online course, finding value in it, learning how to blog, blogging, why wouldn't I want to create my own course? The next thing that I had on my list was outline an online course. Put some content out there. Get started. What are you going to do? What can you teach the people? What can you tell them that they would find valuable? 

The eleventh thing that I could do is write a blog. At the time, I was like, you know what? Don't make this a blog. Record the interviews and put them out there as a podcast. It'll be amazing. But I do miss the writing part of it, right? The show notes just aren't enough. And so I actually wrote down, why don't you go on and start a blog? Write about something, write about life, write about what's happening. And that is something that I can do for free. 

Number 12 on the list, find paying freelance jobs. Freelance jobs because I was doing a lot of work for free. I would write for organizations for free. I would create their newsletters for free. I would do a lot of stuff for free because I didn't need the income. I was being paid, and writing is just something that I enjoy doing. But, I do have on my list that I should start finding paying freelancing jobs so that someone can pay me for the things that I already enjoy doing which is writing, blogging, editing, editing content, editing written words, editing all the stuff. That's another thing I can do while unemployed. That is, looking for paying freelance jobs. 

The thirteenth thing that I could do is clean the house (well, apartment). I'll leave it up to you to know whether or not I've been cleaning the house, but that is on the list of something that I can do for free. 

The fifteenth thing that I could do is write a book. So listen, I've written a 10,000-word blog article. I had a 9-page outline that I started with to write all of these words. Most novels are about 80,000 words. What's another 70,000 words? This is where my brain was. You're unemployed. You have time. Spend an hour a day. You could have 70,000 words by the end of the year. Write a book. This is how my brain works. I'm finding myself to be quite vulnerable while reading this list. you are hearing about all the things that are interesting to me and things that immediately jumped out to me. 

And so the last thing on the list was perform on social media. And I say perform because I'm not typically in my house wearing lipstick. My hair won't also be done. But to me, putting on lipstick is performing; recording myself as I dance around the kitchen and bake is a performance. And a clip of me dancing around my kitchen cooking Korean spare ribs. That's performing, right? I don't typically do that when I'm at the house. So, performing on social media is a good way for me to remember that you can have online content and displays, but you are showing 100% of the 10% of your life that you're sharing with other people. You're in my house seeing where I record, seeing where I work, seeing where I edit, podcast and record them with others but this is 10% of my life so you can get 100% of 10% of my life and that's how I think about social media. 

Now I do want to say while this list was not in any particular order I really was just sitting down and jotting out things that I could do. Of course, I'm looking for a job. I look for jobs every week. I have been applying for unemployment, which did get approved after being contested by the employer. I was constantly looking for jobs. I'm constantly applying and sending out my resume. I did that before my resume was edited and I have better chances after it was edited. 

So those were the 15 things that I am doing right now while I'm unemployed. I hope that I can stop working on the list because I get a job. I'm applying to jobs all the time and I know that one of them will work out for me. So, I hope you enjoyed the list. I hope you are employed. And maybe you just watched the video so that you could see what was on my list. Maybe you were curious, or if you know someone who's unemployed or if you yourself are unemployed, feel free to make a list of things that you can do because you're valuable. You are important. And there are a ton of things that you can do that are for free or that only require your cell phone. In a few weeks, I will record an update to this blog and let you know what's happening right now. 

Until the next blog, 

Kyla

Post Script: we had an amazing time in Florida! We stayed in a cut eAir BnB and there were a lot of fireworks going off, which didn;t help my kiddo sleep, but it was her first time being on a plane, her first time seeing the ocean, and we had prepared financially for this trip so it wasnt ruined by this unfortunate news.