Having been laid off, I certainly understand the fear one has about no longer having an income to sustain oneself, but I hear a lot of people talk about looking everywhere for work, and not finding it. Of course, where I live is pretty well-populated, so while there's a lot of jobs available, there's also a lot of people around to fill them.
However, a lot of people seem to have the impression that they need to throw the fishing line in for each job in order to come up with something. They play the numbers game in an additive way, putting in anywhere from 5-30 lines in the water at any given time.
Well, it is a numbers game. The more lines in the water, the more the likelihood of catching a fish, possibly a big one.
The interesting thing about the numbers game is that many play it in an additive way, wearing themselves out in order to place so many lines in the water. This can be an especially difficult situation if each line requires watching, and possibly maintenance. This can result in a maximum number of lines at any given time, since any more would be unsustainable.
There is a military phrase that should be used in non-military applications far more often than it is. "Force Multiplication." Force multiplication improves the ability of each member of a group, thereby "multiplying" the ability of the group to accomplish the goal in question, and can also divide the necessary maintenance, thereby resulting in a massive net gain with little effort.
If you have 30 lines in the water, and you double each one's effectiveness, then you've got the equivalent of 60 lines in the water. If you find a way to cause those lines to work together, say making them into a net, then you've essentially increased the effectiveness by an order of magnitude, and reduced the maintenance by a similar order of magnitude.
While the fishing metaphor isn't quite accurate (as I'm hardly a fisherman, and I know a 30-line net isn't going to catch much, sans lures), it does apply to many things outside of military lore. The search for employment is one such thing.
Think about this: in a business, a project will consist of many different kinds of people. Each person will have some specialty in a relevant piece of the project, and therefore, can accomplish that piece far better than an average person. By combining these experts into one project, you've essentially multiplied the ability of the project to exceed demands. This is not limited to "projects" of the corporate sense, but also can apply to personal or community projects. In essence, the combination of experts can multiply the force of work towards a goal.
There are force-multipliers for the job market. Temporary agencies and contract agencies essentially combine specialists and connected people into a group that can essentially handle the equivalent groundwork, in a day, to what a single person would need a whole week to accomplish. By themselves, such agencies are a powerful force multiplier.
There are force-multipliers for the dating world. You could go to nice places where you are likely to meet the people you want to spend time with, but, like the job market above, there is very little efficiency in the practice, especially given the limited information one has on any potential interest they encounter. Many exes from hell are encountered in this way. Granted, there's also stories of "dating site exes from hell" stories out there, but at least the field can be effectively narrowed a lot quicker and more effectively through such sites than it can in a bar or a library (or any other place you care to name).
There are force-multipliers for hobbies out there. As previous posts have mentioned, I have a particular interest in making my own tools; custom-made tools means a hobby can be fined tuned to fit your needs, and with far less cost, and in less time than it can if you were to search out and buy all your tools. With good scavenging skills (dumpster diving, curbside collection, etc.), you might not even need a lot of materials... never mind recycling materials like plastic and metal, or desoldering and collecting items like electronic components, from those things you might otherwise throw out. (Although I can't stress enough you MUST be careful about ensuring some high-voltage equipment like CRT displays are drained... there's no efficiency in dying a horrible, painful, and particularly gruesome death, or ending up a vegetable)
All these examples cover the exact same thing; applying something to your actions that multiply their effectiveness, rather than just working harder to add to your effectiveness. As the saying goes, "Work smarter, not harder." Whatever you do, take a few minutes, and actually look at the steps you are following. See what you can do to multiply their effectiveness, whether it is to increase speed, decrease cost and/or effort, and possibly to do things in parallel. You might just see a new way to accomplish your goals a lot faster than you would if you wore yourself out with hard work.
