 I've been unemployed for over a year. As you know, I will be leaving the company at the end of May. Last year, I quit my job as a head of design. I just quit my job. So what is it like being unemployed for a year? Oh! Don't wake up on your birthday with a hangover. Not that kind of sausage. I think we're in the clouds. And I'm here on my own. Maybe you're thinking about working towards your passion. To start the business that you've always wanted. Or just to learn about something completely new. Chill. Before you go do that, there's a few things you should know. Let's talk about some observations that I've had and what I've learned in the past 14 months of being unemployed. Okay, let's start with the good things. You get to pick and choose who you work with. Unlike in any other job where you're forced to work with someone that you might not necessarily like or find difficult to work with, here you can decide. This gives you the freedom to connect with people that inspire you, motivate you and compliment your skills. Definitely not something easy to find in a nine to five. The probability of finding great people to work with increases. For example, I recently worked with an editor to release a podcast series. I don't think I'll be able to do that in my design job. Naturally, being able to pick and choose means you have the power to say no. Sometimes at work, there's not a luxury to say no. Here, it's all in your control. You get to decide what you work on, what you want to do and when. I had a few projects that I said yes to, but plenty of them I said no. Even though I said yes to a lot, my priority was actually saying no. Remember the reason why you quit and this will help you to say no more often. The other great thing about being unemployed is you get to wear many different hats. In a corporate nine to five, you're only responsible for your part of the business. Even if you're in a startup, you're still constrained by your field and expertise. It's rare that you get to step out of what you do day to day and to work on something completely new or work on a new set of skills because you're so focused at the task at hand, you can do much more on your own when you're forced to. In this whole year, I've stepped into the roles of producer, scriptwriter, editor, social media manager, marketer, sales. It's been crazy trying to play all these roles, but I've learned to experiment with different things. And if you want to start a business, being a jack of all trades is actually essential. Figuring out what you want to automate or outsource so you can focus on the good things, figuring out which hat you actually want to wear. What about the not so good things? Suddenly quitting and having 40 plus hours a week back into your own schedule, what do you do with all that time? And this could be a double-edged sword. You have so much time to overthink. It starts with not being a part of a traditional company or team and it gets very isolating because you don't talk to people on a regular basis and you're constantly overthinking about that decision and subsequently other decisions you make during your unemployment journey. You end up worrying about money, how to downgrade your lifestyle so you can stretch out your unemployment longer. Thinking is not inherently bad, but you need to direct it into a productive outcome. If you're not careful, you'll be thinking instead of doing. The trick is to keep busy. Talking about productivity, motivation is a key battle you'll face during your unemployment. At work, naturally you have deadlines and people to answer to. Here, you have full ownership of the problem and if you're like me, I tend to give myself a bit of a break. You end up feeling guilty if you feel like you're wasting time because you're not productive. Sometimes I get choice paralysis. I don't know what to do just because there's so much to do and then I end up doing nothing. Routines are helpful if you like them but building habits are very hard and what I've learned is you have to just sit there and figure out how you get into your flow state. Remember, motivation, ebbs, and flows. Recognizing patterns to help you get out of your slum will help you pick yourself up and keep moving. On the subject of picking yourself up, the last thing I wanna mention is finding your confidence. Being out of a full-time job might feel like you're getting left behind. Maybe you're going on LinkedIn and you get job envy. Comparing, you're looking at your previous colleagues, they're doing great and you're saying, what if I stayed? Should I? What if I could? So how do you gain your confidence back? Well, don't fall behind. Update yourself about what's going on in the industry or the field that you're working in. Get the work, Goss. Get the work, T. Even though you're not working full-time, you're still within that community. Either connect with that one or connect with a new community you wanna be a part of. And if you do need to feel good about yourself, start what I call a booster project. Something you're currently good at and you can do quickly. So you feel like you're still a productive member of society. Bonus, you make a little bit of money. One thing that's really helped me to find my confidence is speaking to others. Why? Because it gives you clarity. You have to articulate a certain idea or problem without communicating this idea that's in your head. It's just that. So speak to someone. Think of it as productivity therapy. Ideas tend to compound. You might find a spark when conversation starts flowing. The overall learning is this. You get to define what your work is because more questions appear than answers. Why does the modern office work look like this? Why five days a week and not four or three? Why eight hours a day and not six hours? Are there better things to do with my time? How much is my time worth? And this really changes your whole perspective about work, tailoring work to your lifestyle. For me, luckily, asynchronous and remote work is nothing new. My most productive days are Saturday and Sunday for some strange reason. I'm also a night out, so I function and think better at night. In conclusion, you wanna ask yourself, what if I never went back to work? What if I never had a boss again? How do I transition from my nine to five to somewhere completely different and completely customized to you? What would that look like? For now, I'm enjoying this. I feel like I can do more without doing more. So there's definitely things that need to be fixed. So those are my insights. Maybe you found it useful, maybe you didn't. Peace.