2.2 — The First Seventy-Two Hours

If this has just happened, this is the page.

Two things before the list.

You do not have to feel anything in particular. People report relief, numbness, shame, rage, and nothing at all — frequently several in one afternoon. All of them are normal and none of them means anything about how this goes.

And nothing important has to be decided today. The only things that matter in the next three days are a small number of practical items that are easy to do badly if you rush and easy to do well if you follow a list.

Day one: the paperwork, and nothing else

Do these six things and then stop.

1. Get everything in writing

The termination letter, the last working day, the notice period, the settlement, and what happens to accrued leave.

Do not sign anything on the day. You are entitled to read it, and to take it away, and to have somebody else look at it. A company that pressures you to sign immediately is telling you something.

2. Ask the four questions

Before you leave the conversation, or by email immediately after:

What is my last working day, and am I required to work the notice or is it paid in lieu?

What exactly is the settlement — notice, severance, accrued leave, bonus, and anything else?

When does my health insurance end, and is there any continuation?

And what will you say if somebody calls for a reference?

Write the answers down.

3. Save what is yours

Your contacts. Your own work samples where you are permitted to have them. Your payslips. Your appraisals. Your contract.

Personal email address for anything, and check your policy — do not take anything confidential, because a dispute about that will consume months you do not have.

Do it today. Access is usually cut fast.

4. Handle the health insurance

The item people forget and the one that can cost the most.

Find out the exact date cover ends. If anybody in your household has a condition or is mid-treatment, this is the most urgent item on this page and it should be dealt with before anything else.

Arrange a personal policy before the employer one lapses, because a gap is expensive and a new policy may have waiting periods.

5. Find out what you are entitled to

Varies by country and by state. Unemployment benefit where it exists, any statutory redundancy payment, provident fund and gratuity in India, continuation of any state health scheme, and any support from a professional body or union.

Apply on day one or two. These almost always take weeks to pay and the clock starts at application.

6. Tell one person

Not everybody. One.

Somebody who will not be frightened by it and will not immediately give you advice.

Day two: the number

One task, and it is the most important thing you will do this month.

Work out your runway (2.3).

Three figures on one page:

What is in the bank, plus anything arriving.

What your essential monthly spending actually is — housing, food, utilities, transport, medication, debt minimums, insurance. Essential, not typical.

Divide the first by the second. That is your runway in months.

And it will almost certainly be a different number from the one in your head, in one direction or the other.

Do not act on it today. Just know it. 2.3 is the chapter on what to do with it.

Day three: the shape of the search

Not applications yet. Three preparatory things.

Update your CV and profile. Two hours, not two weeks. It will be wrong and you will improve it; a CV that exists is worth infinitely more than one being perfected.

Write the list of twenty people. Not a network — twenty specific names of people who know your work. 2.5 is what to do with them.

And write the two-sentence version of what happened.

My role was made redundant in a restructuring in August. I am looking for X.

No apology, no explanation, no bitterness. Write it now, while you are calm, because you will say it forty times over the next months and you do not want to be composing it each time.

What not to do this week

Five things, and each is common.

Do not send a message to the company or a colleague while angry. Whatever it costs you to not send it, it is less than what sending it costs. Volume VII's rule: nothing irreversible inside the window.

Do not tell everybody at once. You will spend the week managing other people's reactions, and you have nothing to spend on that.

Do not make a large financial move on day two. **Cashing out a long-term investment, moving house, taking a loan. Wait until 2.3 is done.

Do not start applying to everything immediately. A hundred applications in week one produces a hundred rejections in week three and a large hole in your confidence (2.8). A structured search starting in week two beats a frantic one starting on day one.

And do not decide what this means about you. Not this week. The conclusions you draw in the first seventy-two hours are drawn in the worst available state and they tend to stick.

The thing to say to yourself

Because you will need something and the honest version is better than the encouraging one.

Sector matters more than performance (2.1). Whole categories of role disappeared at once and yours was one of them.

This takes months and months is normal, not failure.

And the practical things on this page are almost all of what can be usefully done right now. Once they are done, the correct thing to do with the rest of the week is rest, because the search is long and starting it exhausted is the most common avoidable error.

If there is no notice and no settlement

Because for a large number of people, particularly in informal or contract work, none of the above applies and the money stops on the day.

Then day one is 2.3 and 2.4, immediately.

And the priority order is: keep the housing, keep the food, keep the medication, keep the phone. Everything else can lapse and be recovered.

2.4 is the chapter for this situation specifically and it is written for it.

The seventy-two-hour checklist

Day one: letter in writing, four questions answered, personal files saved, insurance end date known, entitlements applied for, one person told.

Day two: the runway number.

Day three: CV updated in two hours, twenty names written down, two-sentence explanation drafted.

Then stop and rest for the remainder of the week.

What to do with this page

Sign nothing on the day.

Find out when the health cover ends, before anything else.

Apply for entitlements immediately, because they pay from the application date.

Work out the runway number on day two and do not act on it yet.

And do not decide what this means about you this week.

Next: 2.3 — the runway, and the order in which to cut, which is not the order most people use.