Do you know the most-hated question for unemployed people everywhere? Some version of "What did you do today?"

No matter how productive you've been in your job search, the question rankles. You might have sent a dozen letters, made two dozen calls and attended three networking meetings, and it still will seem like "not much" is the correct response. After all, if you didn't negotiate an offer, what's there to talk about?

It doesn't help when job-search advisers proclaim, "If you're not job-searching 40 hours a week, you're not trying." The fact is, many people in the workplace aren't putting in 40 hours, either. Once you tally all the nonwork activities, your average bear in a suit — including me — is not fully productive for all the hours on the time clock.

Many of us make it up by working on weekends, but not without complaining. Meanwhile, our unemployed friends have the entire weekend to themselves, but they're not happy, either. They feel guilty. There's a sense that weekends are a reward for working, and, if they weren't working, they don't deserve the reward.

Employed or unemployed, we seem to have an endless capacity to feel guilty about our time off.

The holidays, the frantic season of socializing, provide an entire year's opportunity for guilt in one month. The unemployed are especially vulnerable to guilt attacks during this season, triggered by a toxic combination of their own expectations ("I should be working by now") and the thoughtless comments of others ("Well, at least you have time to do your shopping, dear").

If you're out of work, I can't do much about the people making those comments, other than to say that I would avoid them. But I can offer advice to help you tackle the guilt you're piling on yourself: Stop it.

A job search is difficult enough without doing the emotional equivalent of tying your own shoe-

laces together. With rare exceptions, guilt does not play a motivating or productive role in the hunt for work. Instead, it eats away at self-esteem until the job-seeker becomes as ineffective as the guilt was making him or her feel.

Instead of telling yourself that you're messing up your job search, count your successes and plan for more of them. Here are three ideas to help.

1. Make a weekly schedule and stick with it. Suppose you thought that it might take 12 weeks and about 10 interviews to get a job. Then you need to create a schedule that includes enough phone calls, letters and networking meetings to generate those 10 interviews. (A good job-search strategist can help you customize a plan for your industry and city.) Once your schedule is made, follow it every day.

2. Measure success by effort, not results. In a job search, results can't be measured immediately. If you make 15 calls but get no interviews, do the calls represent a failure? Not in my book. The next five might yield interviews, but you'll never know if you give up after 15. Stick to your daily plan and don't make adjustments until after a few weeks have passed, if then.

3. Give yourself a break. When you have finished your tasks for the day — whether at 5 p.m. or noon — stop. Ditto for when you have finished for the week. I don't care whether you're job-searching 10 hours a week or 40; if you're completing the tasks in a well-strategized campaign, you're done.

Learn to say things to yourself and others such as, "I'm conducting an intensive job search to find a position as (fill in the blank)," rather than, "I've been looking for months, and nothing seems to be working." If it's really not working, schedule a meeting next week with someone who can help. Otherwise, cut out the negative talk and stick to your plan. And, for heaven's sake, enjoy your weekend.

- Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecaree rservice.com or at 1071 W. Seventh St., St. Paul, MN 55102.