"When you're unemployed, finding work should become your full-time job."
This assumes there's enough of a job market "out there" that after more than 6 months you can still burn 40 hours per week on it.
"This is not possible if you're dicking around with ... volunteer work."
This doesn't even make sense. Most volunteer work doesn't require much money. You may be confusing setting up a charity or donating to a charity with volunteer work at a charity. Even something "time consuming" like serving soup at the church soup kitchen can't burn more than a couple hours.
I did volunteer work at a soup kitchen and through the connections I made there I worked with someone who kicked my butt and fixed my resume. If that hadn't happened i wouldn't be making the salary I am now.
The ancient wisdom: give and it will be given you is mysteriously powerful. Humans want to help those who help others, it's in our genetics.
It is the first step of forming an alliance and symbiotic relationship between adversarial systems.
When two humans want to acquire all the assets of the other and make the other one the slave, the first step in starting an alliance is doing a cost benefit analysis of how things would be easier for both if cooperation was done. Often times the one persuaded is reluctant until one human takes a leap of faith and gives, in expectation of receiving. It's all highly mathematical and I could create an algorithm to describe it. But you wouldn't recommend that either.
This assumes there's enough of a job market "out there" that after more than 6 months you can still burn 40 hours per week on it.
"This is not possible if you're dicking around with ... volunteer work."
This doesn't even make sense. Most volunteer work doesn't require much money. You may be confusing setting up a charity or donating to a charity with volunteer work at a charity. Even something "time consuming" like serving soup at the church soup kitchen can't burn more than a couple hours.