The 6 Week Build Season and 'Mentor Burnout'

[Siri]

Originally Posted by JB987

"None of the teams are going to say "Today, we take this specific friday off - the team will not meet on friday during week 5 out of 7." That's scary."

Actually Evan, our team did exactly this...after a rough 2010 build season when we tried to do the impossible (lift 2 robots along with our bot) and finally figured out that the points weren't worth the effort, so we decided to take off all Fridays since that season and we also banished all-nighters, rarely working until midnight these last 3 seasons. We scaled back and set smarter work schedules, work fewer and shorter days and as our record attests, it hasn't seemed to hurt our end product. A bag free season could allow us to spread out the work days even better and IMO further reduce the burn out potential while still maintaining a top notch program/robot. As stated in an earlier post, it just takes discipline.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this. Our team as a whole took 2 weeks off total before worlds, but we'll send people home or tell them not to come if it's starting to visibly wear them--everyone individually has had much longer off. Additionally, 7 of those 14 days were the first Tuesdays and Fridays of January. If build season was longer this schedule would last longer, because we'd make it that way. We've gained a very firm understanding of what happens if we work our students and mentors too hard for too long: the end product (the robot, team and inspiration) gets worse, not better.

Do other teams not experience this? I would think they do, given that we're talking about burnout. Will "everyone" really try to go full out for 4 months? Why? There are much, much better ways to "keep up with the Jones'" that don't risk harming our end goal. We've already learned HOT meets less often than most of us do in the current build season. If I recall, 1114's mentors are in mostly just on weekends. Yes, a unbagged season will require more self-control, but I don't think I buy the argument that competition will force teams to burn themselves out, if only because it should be a foreseeable situation (is it not? why not?) and has a negative impact on competitiveness.