If you want your personal project to succeed, you’ve got to work on it constantly. Jerry Seinfeld says to not break the chain, while Stephen King says to write every day. Getting better at something requires the motivation and discipline to put in a bit of work every day – to persevere through every setback.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. Tech projects are especially notorious about this – the complexity of a new app’s design and code might hit a blocker at any moment, and that can quickly make someone walk away. There’s hundreds of dozens of little pieces all scattered around that require attention, and any single one of them might trip everything up.
It’s exhausting. Finding a solution might mean hours of Google and Stackoverflow searches, watching tutorials in hopes that someone ran into the same issue, or possibly tracking down someone to help. It could be days before you get past a specific hurdle, and even then, who knows how quickly a solution can be implemented.
This is where Weekend Club steps in. Every Saturday, techies and entrepreneurs gather in Zoom and Slack to offer up advice and guidance to anyone working on a personal project. With a group of entrepreneurs that includes startup founders, veteran coders, designers, and everything in between, Weekend Club works to provide a place of answers, help, and encouragement.
Much like a standard tech shop, each day begins with a standup, has office hours, and an end-day retrospective to cover your progress. There’s also access to a wealth of digital assets, including discounts on popular products such as Stripe and Notion.
The overall idea is to provide a place where entrepreneurs can flourish by surrounding themselves with knowledgeable and experienced veterans – people who have been in the same situation before, and can deliver their wisdom quickly. Of course, knowing that you’ll be using a part of your week to push forward on your project is meant to foster a sense of determination to get it done, which in turn can help fuel aspirations and get things completed.
A subscription is $49/month and grants you access to a wealth of useful resources, and there is a free 30 days trial as well. A quick glance at the testimonial page shows that this weekly meeting has been a savior for numerous people as they work to get their ideas into motion. By taking away the loneliness of a personal project and instead replacing it with a supportive group of like-minded individuals, Weekend Club provides a way to remain devoted and productive.
As one person mentions on Weekend Club’s Product Hunt Page, “Best thing about Weekend Club is that it gently keeps you accountable and aligned with your goals.”
In the end, if diligence is the key, then giving yourself access to a team of mentors and colleagues is an excellent way to continue your journey. Weekend Club might only be meeting once a week, but this could change in the future. And besides, at least one focused day is better than none at all, and that motivation can carry through an entire week.
It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you got to do it every day. That’s the hard part. But it does get easier.
Robert Snodgrass has an English degree from Texas A&M University, and wants you to know that yes, that is actually a thing. And now he's doing something with it! Let us all join in on the experiment together. When he's not web developing at Docusign, he runs distances that routinely harm people and is the kind of giant nerd that says "you know, there's a King of the Hill episode that addresses this exact topic".
