If you were laid off, career advisers would tell you your new job is to look for a new job. But what if your lay-off was temporary, as short as a week or even just a day? What would you do with your newfound “spare time” then?

It’s an important question to ask yourself. As companies look for ways to cut costs while salvaging productivity, they frequently turn to furloughs – periods of unpaid leave imposed on employees. (The word sounds very quaint and European, but it’s serious business.)

As a newspaper journalist in the Chicago area, I’ve spent my share of weekdays at home with the kids lately when I normally would have been working. I took a week off in May, and starting in July, I will start going to work four days a week.

Here are a few tips I picked up from my personal experience:

Plan Your Time Off

• If you have any flexibility in scheduling your furlough, do so carefully. Example: If you collect bi-weekly paychecks, you may want to wait for one of those precious three-payday months -- you know the ones I’m talking about -- to stay home for a week. I did, and I ended up staying ahead of my bills because I still took home 125% of my typical monthly pay.
• And if your spouse can pick up any extra hours at work, take your furlough around his/her schedule. My wife managed to pick up an extra shift on Fridays, so when I begin my four-day work week next month, I figure I will take off Fridays and spend the day at home with the kids.

Claim Unemployment

• The law varies from state to state, but in some cases, you may be able to claim unemployment benefits. Illinois, Florida, New York and California are among states where you can apply for unemployment during a temporary lay-off.
• Be aware that you will not qualify for benefits if you exceed a maximum income threshold in a week’s time, so taking five days off from Monday through Friday may put you in a better position to apply than using five days here and there over the course of several weeks. Check with your local unemployment office.

Pick Up the Job Search

• Update your LinkedIn profile, polish your resume, check job postings on Craigslist, network and reconnect with old contacts. It’s important to keep moving on your career path, even when you are compelled to stand still.

Go Back to School

• Take your surplus free time and invest it in something important: yourself.
• When a massive round of layoffs hit my company early this year, I decided it was time to update my skill set. Being a newspaper reporter whose abilities were limited primarily to research and writing, I wanted to join a profession in greater demand. Web development was a logical choice, and within days I had enrolled at the local community college to start a certificate program. Those qualifications will help me if I lose my job during the recession, and even if I don’t, I will still end up a stronger job candidate for my efforts.

Relax

• Maybe you just want to schedule a vacation and get some of that much-deserved R&R. There’s no reason you can’t do that during your furlough.
• Plus, if you save some of your regular time off as a result, you may be able to sell back your unused vacation time to the company. Or if the bottom finally falls out and you are laid off, you could be entitled to a vacation time payout. It depends on the law and how your company’s vacation time policy is written, so check with human resources.

For other tips on how to spend your furlough time, read Dana Mattioli’s story from the Wall Street Journal.