Moonlight

We have always struggled to prioritize working on side projects when socializing is an option, so we put the two together and formed a side project club.

From the project page in Notion:

We have stuff we want to make or do or be. Progress on these goals is squeezed in around day jobs, into nights and weekends, and wherever else we can make time. It’s also subject to fatigue, distraction, and loneliness.

Moonlight sets out against these common obstacles with a rhythm of festivity, co-working, and accountability. We gather to celebrate our work, we set aside time to make progress on our projects, and we turn to our friends (and our money) for extra motivation—all around the cycle of the moon.

We explored a few structures for incentivizing members, including grants, light shaming, and pooling and redistributing money based on success. We ultimately landed on a system where people wagered on their ability to complete their goal—forfeiting their money to Moonlight if they failed to complete it or having it returned if they succeeded.

Every lunation (the name for a cycle of the moon) we would host a showcase, where members would present what they achieved and announce their wagers for the following lunation.

Livvy presenting at the showcase for Lunation 1197

Over the course of the twenty-four lunations that Moonlight was active, a total of twenty-three members made ninety-six wagers totaling over $2,000 with a 70% success rate, attempting such varied projects as learning to code, packing one box every day, making custom Doom maps, improving Rubik’s cube solving times, and baking puff pastries.

Though we made some attempts at continuing Moonlight remotely when the pandemic ended our in-person meetups, we ultimately capitulated and closed things down, though we’d love to start something similar up again in the future.

Branded portaits of Moonlight members