How YesGaffer! came to be

Yes Gaffer!

In November I booked a caravan in Great Yarmouth for 3 days.

I had the idea for Yes Gaffer! about two years ago and was frustrated because I couldn't find the time to build it.

The idea was to go somewhere cheap, with no frills and zero distractions. I pre-prepped all of my meals, turned off my phone and notifications for 3 days, coded for ~17 hours a day and ran on the beach with my dog for ~1.

Two reasons for this post: 1️⃣ to tell you about the experience; and 2️⃣ to share Yes Gaffer!

1️⃣ The experience

I'll start with the experience because I absolutely loved it and it's probably more interesting to my network.

I did @Uplugged 3 years ago and have been a digital detox convert ever since. A weekend without notifications and a slower pace is always appealing to me. This was far from a digital detox (a coding weekend is more like digital overload). However, the key similarity was that I shut out the entire world (except for my dog) and was a full-on recluse for those 3 days.

Like many people, I love nothing more than getting into a flow state, that feeling when you're bursting with creative energy and don't want to go to bed because you're addicted to that feeling of progress. One of the strange contradictions about that state is that it has a calmness too. I was “working” crazy hours but it never felt like work and I was never really tired or demotivated. I was up for it.

Remember, this was against the backdrop of a very bleak place. No offence to any one from G. Yarmouth, it would be the same in any holiday park and deserted UK seaside town in November. 😄

Some of my friends and family thought my intention to retreat to a caravan and not speak to anyone for a weekend was pretty weird. But to me it was no different to people squirrelling away and writing a book or painting or some other creative pursuit. It was flow state bliss and I know that many of my connections on here will get it.

Talking of creative pursuits, I think a key 🔑 reason for its success and my enjoyment of the experience was that Yes Gaffer! is a pet project. I deliberately and proactively did NOT think about product market fit or commercialisation in any way. That was quite unnatural for me but I stuck with the principle. Giving myself permission to treat it like that made the whole thing feel like Play, and therefore so, so enjoyable. (I quite literally still couldn't tell you about Yes Gaffer!'s competition).

As an aside, the experience got me thinking that there could be a market for facilitating no frills creative weekenders. Blocking out non-negotiable time for creative play in secluded environments that ignite flow states so you can create something you've been meaning to but never found time to. Is this interesting to people? Maybe I'll have to book another weekend in Great Yarmouth and work through the idea… A cottage in the Peak District would be preferable, mind…

2️⃣ So what is Yes Gaffer!?

If you play amateur football, you're probably in various WhatsApp groups where there are messages every single day trying to organise availability for the next game. It's unbelievably repetitive admin.

WhatsApp polls have gone a long way to solving the issue and this almost led me to not bother with Yes Gaffer! at all.

However, for more organised teams (e.g. competitive 11 aside or 7 aside teams, kids teams) they have to think about formations every week with an ever-changing squad, including ringers who aren't in the WhatsApp group. Getting a picture of visibility for weeks ahead is also tricky when it's buried in WhatsApp polls/messages above, even if those messages are pinned. This visibility informs who/how much you need to chase. And then there's the never-ending chasing itself.

The Gaffer of my team, Raj, famously has a magnetic tactics board that he occasionally whips out. We also have a management WhatsApp group where people would send photos of lineup/formation paper scrawlings.

Yes Gaffer! is designed to be the fastest and funnest way to sort fixtures, availability and formations.

Its most important principle is that it interfaces with WhatsApp.

I don't want to try to move people from where they are, I'd rather meet them where they already are (WhatsApp). Yes Gaffer! is deliberately not an app. There's zero friction to moving your team to using it, because the required effort for players to share their availability is exactly the same as polls: one tap in response to a WhatsApp message. There's just a load of fun and free bonuses on top for the geeks!

The start of this demo video shows this in action:

I built almost all of this in that single weekend in November and tested it with my team in December-January. Everyone has been loving it and it has been very cool to see our management WhatsApp group sharing screenshots from Yes Gaffer! instead of photos of scraps of paper with handwritten lineups.

It's free and I don't have any plans to monetise it. I just get a real kick out of creating stuff and people enjoying it.

Give it a try at www.yesgaffer.com.

— Sean Donnelly