[jgerstein]

Originally Posted by Hallry

Just want to point out that if anyone knows how to manage their time well, it's Mike and Team 67. They meet only 3 times a week during build season - 4pm to 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 8am to 4pm on Saturdays. And yet look at their consistent robot quality year after year.

1257 used to meet 5-6 days a week during build season. After a disastrous 2013 season we stepped back a bit to do some serious re-evaluation of how we operated. One thing we realized was that as much as we stressed out about not having enough time, we weren't using the time we did have effectively - our students (and mentors) were suffering from burnout and exhaustion, and it was leading to stress, anger, and a great deal of wasted time.

We ended up cutting our build schedule back to 3 hour meetings, 3 days a week, with the option to have additional work time if it was needed. It turned out that we got more work done in fewer hours, and without students failing their classes due to robotics overload. I hope to teach my students that more work isn't necessarily better.