About

Overview

The Good for Nothings Club is a creators club based in Austin, TX made up of designers, engineers, filmmakers, musicians, and writers. Club members bring projects and meet weekly to lend expertise, collaborate, and hold each other accountable on progress.

As members, we have always tried to strike a balance between work and pursuing our passions such as film, music, app development, and more. In the Good for Nothings Club (GFNC), our objective should be to dedicate half of our time towards generating sufficient income, while allocating the other half to our more ambitious projects that have the potential to yield even greater long term. Our growth should be deliberate and gradual, focusing on retaining most of the work within our team and close friends. It is crucial to avoid building a business solely focused on infinite revenue and scale, as it tends to consume all of our time, preventing us from pursuing our creative endeavors.

What Members Can Expect From GFNC

1. Meet weekly for ~1 hour – in person, remote, or hybrid
   1. In person meetings should be prioritized over remote. The organic conversations that happen after the meeting tend to be the most impactful.
   2. The first half of the meeting (~30 min) should be spent on meeting agenda topics.
   3. The second half of the meeting (~30 min) should be spent on tasks related to works in progress.
2. Provide and receive help breaking down tasks and identifying the next one in line
3. Accountability for completing tasks
   1. The goal should be to provide pressure but not inflict burn out or be cruel.
4. Critical feedback on in progress and completed work
   1. The goal is to push people to get better at their craft and provide constructive criticism, guidance, or suggestions, not to be an asshole about it.
5. We are not managers or delegators.
   1. Every member is expected to generate their own work through tasks in their solely owned or co-owned projects
   2. Optionally, members can volunteer to help with tasks in other projects that they don’t own.

What GFNC Expects From Members

1. Members should try to attend all weekly meetings, missing no more than one a month – averaged out over the lifetime of their membership.
2. Notify the group ahead of time when you're not able to attend a meeting and inquire about possibly rescheduling
3. Keep your tasks organized and representative of the current work in progress + future work that has already been identified
4. Share demos of your work with the group and be open to critical feedback
5. Members should always have at least one project that they are owning/co-owning, almost like a "hero quest".
   1. Members can take on as many side quests as they want, i.e. pitching in on someone else's project.
   2. There is no cap on total projects that a member can have in-flight at any given time.
   3. Feedback should be given if a member takes on too many projects and has too much on their plate.
6. Identify at least one task to do each week.
   1. Do not take advantage of this by only doing the bare minimum for an extended period of time. Other members are encouraged to flag this behavior and help construct appropriate tasks to mitigate.

Guidance

1. Do not assign tasks to a person until they are ready to be completed in the upcoming week or staged for the following week to keep the My Tasks as minimal as possible
2. Add milestones as sections to a project once they're identified
3. Keep the number of assigned tasks in a week to a reasonably completable number so as not to overwhelm
4. Within a project, only add dates on future tasks that are required by a specific date, otherwise just keep the tasks stacked in priority order
5. Try to assign one small task to complete on weeks where you're prohibitively busy or on vacation