Working alone is difficult to many people. There are various ways of countering it, one of which is going to a coworking space (StartupBlink’s partner, WeWork provides up to 15% discount to get you started). However, coworking only provides you with a working environment, and not actual people to work with.

That’s why we launched StartupBlink’s Work-Jam community. The community is free to join in its initial phase, and will remain free for early participants who keep active in it.

StartupBlink Work Jams are a combination of physical gatherings with virtual sessions via our telegram channel.

The Work Jam idea is simple, connect with like-minded people who build things, commit to completing your to-do items during the sessions, and report back the results to the group. This is being done via physical meetups and an online telegram community.

Before we introduce our methodology and tools, here are the valuable links you should check in regard to to work jam sessions:

StartupBlink’s meetup chapters where you can locate the next physical workjam meetup (usually at Coffee shops) to do Work Jams live together with your local community members.
StartupBlink General telegram chat channel. Use this introductions, discussions, questions and finding partners for a virtual workjam online.
StartupBlink Pomodoro telegram chat channel. After you have found partners to do an online pomodoro session via the main chat channel, switch here to do the actual session, and activate the timer on this channel.

Now, let’s get back to basics. If the physical pomodoro event in your city has enough participants, you can stay offline without joining our online channels. Someone just needs to volunteer to run a timer of 25-minute work sessions and 5-minute breaks and make sure people can declare their goal for the session goal before it begins. Use the 5-minute breaks between sessions to chat and get to know your group and get fresh coffees.

In case, the group isn’t big enough, or you want to connect with StartupBlink’s global Work Jams community, feel free to join our Telegram Work Jam chat channel. We will meet there every time a physical events are taking place (Currently we run weekly events every Tuesday, at 9AM, 5PM, and 9PM London time).

The benefits of Pomodoro sessions are as following:

Accountability – the action of sharing your intended goal for a work period is powerful as it creates internal accountability to get it done.
Deadline – we work with a timer to make sure you can’t slack.
Networking – use the 5-minute break to breath, disconnect and chat with members in the channel or in a physical meetup. Making those connections is powerful so invest time in it as those could be your future co-founders, team members, investors, suppliers and clients.

Make the best of our virtual community

Online Work Jam rocks.

Here are some recommended guidelines for the Telegram Work Jam:

Check in and Introduce yourself in the Global chat channel. E.g. /Checkin Eli from Vilnius, working on a global startup map. Anyone wants to join a a pomodoro session?
Found a partner or partners to crime? Great. Switch to the dedicated Pomodoro telegram channel so you can activate the timer there. Activating the timer is easy, just type /25 in the channel to start the 25 minute pomodoro timer.
Declare /todo before the sessions starts on what you plan to achieve. e.g. /todo finish my emails
Stop working in the 5-minute break. Use it to stretch, or better yet, chat with the fellow attendees of the Work Jam telegram channel, and pull more participants from the main channel to join you.

Planned future development