Stress, burnout, and stepping back

[MrRoboSteve]

Oblarg: dealing with burnout is really about setting priorities. Learning how to deal with it is a skill -- one that you'll be able to apply at work as well as with volunteering. In the FRC world, I try to do this:

1. Consider changing your definition of success from "a great robot" to "kids were inspired." There are a lot more opportunities for reward in FRC using the latter criterion.

2. Don't overschedule yourself and the team. Most weeks during the build season, FRC 3081 has 20 hours of meetings, and no one is expected to be at every one. With school and other commitments, those hours beyond 20 in a week have diminishing returns.

We see the same thing at work -- people can handle a couple weeks going well beyond 40 hours, but if you consistently see people working 12 hour days you find that there's a lot of slack in the marginal 20 hours.

3. Schedule breaks. Don't be at every build session.

4. Take care of yourself first. You'll find me at the YMCA a lot in the two weeks prior to the FRC season (also working off those xmas treats).

I'm like Jim in that I'm pretty ready to be done at the end of the build season. But I've learned through work that I feel the same way when a project is coming to an end, so I think of it more as being ready to move on and less about the particular thing I'm working on.

[Ian Curtis]

Presently, I feel like I have no idea how to actually reduce my involvement. I show up to meetings, I see things that look like they won't be done if I do not invest myself in them, and I feel obligated to do so. I can't be the only one who struggles with this, and hopefully some other mentors who have dealt with similar issues can weigh in.

You've got to let things go undone. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and chances are it doesn't really matter if those holes are exactly 1.125" apart, or that gusset plate is a little crooked, or that boring bar goes back in exactly the right place. Maybe a student will even notice that it doesn't fit, or that the gusset looks bad, or that they cant' find the boring bar at the next team meeting and learn from the experience!

I definitely struggled with this as a first year mentor. I remember getting pretty upset at a freshman for something really stupid in retrospect (I asked for something, maybe a certain sized drill bit?). After the fact, another mentor said something to the effect of, "Come on man, he doesn't even know what you are asking for!" which was of course the truth.

I was lucky enough to not be in a leadership position, so I could take days off. This was really important to keeping me sane -- and you also discover that when you don't show up the world continues.

It isn't easy, but you've just got to decide what's really important and start letting the less important things end up below the waterline. Focus on the fundamentals, and over time you'll find that students will become more competent and more of those things will end up above the waterline.

The stronger the team, the easier it is to keep your head in the game. If you take some time off I'd strongly recommend coming back and spending a year or two with strongest team in your area. You'll build a network of people that will help keep your head above water in the heart of the build season, and you'll learn way more about mentoring than you could teach yourself.

Tone is really important. If you're really stressed, chances are good you'll come off as a jerk (from personal experience). In my experience, high school kids do not respond well to authoritarian mentoring. Keeping your stress level down by having other mentors to lean on, and not sweating unimportant details can really pay benefits by making the students respond to you much more positively.

I hope that is helpful

[onecoolc]

You've mentioned that your move to grad school means you won't be near the same teams anymore. I'm going to suggest that you consider not mentoring a specific team in your new community. Instead, volunteer at kickoff, your local regional competition, etc. It's a good way to stay involved with the FIRST and FRC community while taking a step back from involving yourself in a full build season.

I'm not saying never mentor a team again - just consider taking a break for a year where you prioritize school and limit FRC involvement to specific events. Working as an event volunteer is still plenty fun and busy!

[JesseK]

It's easy: as an individual, stop trying to care so much about the competitive aspects of the team. Then find other people who are energetic and enthusiastic about winning. Guide them through the mentoring process. Marriages depend on stuff like this.

Other than that, it's all about preparation: do you have all of your vendor CAD parts locally, have you CAD'ed anything lately, are your tools calibrated, cleaned and maintained, do you have plenty of prototyping materials, etc.

[DanKein]

OK, there are a lot of great responses to this thread about how to manage your teams time and expectations during a build season. Big Al's advice about prioritizing your school work should be your number 1.

What I see would help you, would come from a deeper reflection on you. Why do you mentor? Who do you mentor for? Is what you are doing mentoring? What are your short term and long term life goals? How does mentoring a FIRST team fit within those goals. I'm sure that there are more questions along this line, that you can form to help you reflect.

I think you need to be spending some time establishing your personal priorities / goals, etc.

Your attribute of personal sacrifice is very noble, but FIRST needs YOU to be successful first.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Now, I've graduated, and another build season is almost here. Next year, I will likely not be doing FRC - at least, not with these teams, since I will be in grad school and won't be here.

Originally Posted by Oblarg

I suppose what I want to ask, after all of that, is how one decides what a healthy amount of involvement is and how one feasibly sticks to such a limit. I do not want to repeat the mental and physical toll of my last two years of mentoring. I also do not want to stop entirely, because I love FRC and care a lot about the teams that I mentor.

I'll echo what several others have said in this thread - you might want to consider not mentoring a team while you're in grad school. You won't be around the teams you've been with for the past few years, so this is probably going to be the easiest time to take a break and not commit to another team. Grad school is tough and has more stringent requirements, and the amount of time it consumes can be variable and hard to predict in advance, depending on classes, research/labwork (if that's a component of your program), and papers. Not great for build season. It's different for everyone, but it's still probably going to be more difficult to manage with a mentoring schedule thrown into the loop too. (disclaimer: I've never done grad school, but I've seen a lot of friends go through it and struggle with the stress, even after they're dropped any extra-curriculars)

But, that wouldn't mean you have to stop doing FRC. Volunteer! It's not the same as mentoring, but it's less of a time commitment, you still get to see competitions, it's still rewarding, and you'll still be involved.

[HelloRobot]

Originally Posted by onecoolc

Instead, volunteer at kickoff, your local regional competition, etc.

I was also going to suggest that because that is probably going to be what I do next year when I am in college (while maintaining contact with my team, of course.).

It seems like most of your work is with the technical side. But because of your longtime experience in FRC, you might be a valuable mentor for team management and organization. This could be especially beneficial to rookie teams who have not established procedures, rules, schedules etc. yet. You'd be just as helpful (specifically in the offseason, as others have suggested) and probably spend fewer days working during the build season. (Although I can't say that they won't recruit you to help them full-time.)

[philso]

Originally Posted by DanKein

Your attribute of personal sacrifice is very noble, but FIRST needs YOU to be successful first.

Another way of looking at it is that if you burn out, you will not be very helpful to any team. You will also drive away others who might consider being a mentor but don't want to make the level of sacrifice you are making. I have seen co-workers burn out, and have been on the brink myself. It is not pretty and recovery can take a very long time.

[Madison]

Just a moderator note -- I split some discussion about handling student burnout into its own thread: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=140897

[Oblarg]

Thank you all for your replies, they've been very helpful in my reflection over the past week.

A quick note, because my OP may not have been clear:

This coming build season, I will not be a student (graduate, undergraduate, or otherwise) - I graduated at the end of the fall semester, and grad school does not start until next fall, so I'm currently in a brief interstitial period of not having any major commitment. So, I really have two issues - how to preserve my own sanity during the coming build season, and how to determine what involvement (if any) I should have during grad school in future seasons. I am now erring towards the side of "none, unless I somehow find myself with a *lot* of spare time" (which I think is unlikely).

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by philso

Another way of looking at it is that if you burn out, you will not be very helpful to any team. You will also drive away others who might consider being a mentor but don't want to make the level of sacrifice you are making. I have seen co-workers burn out, and have been on the brink myself. It is not pretty and recovery can take a very long time.

Outside of FRC11 I know of at least 2 corporations that no longer support FIRST specifically because they had a cascade of burn out between their own goals and the demands of FRC. They were supporting employee involvement directly. As a courtesy I won't name them on this forum because I honor their previous efforts and still thank them for the contributions they made.

When people burn out at the very minimum it leaves work for other people to do and that alone can cause a cascade. I've experienced this from both sides personally. I think the best thing you can try to do is be honest with your team and yourself. Sometimes burn out can not be avoided but I think if your team is realistic with itself it can be minimized. When you can't avoid it even after you make every attempt you have to make tough choices. The more you lead the more you have to make such choices - that's the price of leadership.

School, family issues and job issues can leave one making tough choices. I take a little different view than Philso above - even if your burn out doesn't hurt you finding more help - it is going to hurt these teams if you are making it too easy to rely on a pool of resources too small. Sometimes people respect things more when they have to work for them. In the end if no one else is willing to step up maybe one should re-evaluate how this commitment fits the community.

The very first time I took a step back from FRC11 I specifically told them I felt it was time to see if it would sink or swim. It was a lot to ask from me to start FRC11 as I finished up my college education and the work to do it drove some serious issues for me. FRC11 still exists 20 years later because other people stood up to shoulder the burden: proving that the community thinks this crazy idea isn't so crazy to absolutely everyone after all. It is more gratifying to me that people continue to filter in to support FRC11/193 than that I am the hero that will be forever obligated. It means to me that I contributed to something that hopefully will survive my ability to support it (either for the ominous fact we all pass eventually or because something more critical interferes).

[philso]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

Outside of FRC11 I know of at least 2 corporations that no longer support FIRST specifically because they had a cascade of burn out between their own goals and the demands of FRC. They were supporting employee involvement directly. As a courtesy I won't name them on this forum because I honor their previous efforts and still thank them for the contributions they made.

When people burn out at the very minimum it leaves work for other people to do and that alone can cause a cascade. I've experienced this from both sides personally. I think the best thing you can try to do is be honest with your team and yourself. Sometimes burn out can not be avoided but I think if your team is realistic with itself it can be minimized. When you can't avoid it even after you make every attempt you have to make tough choices. The more you lead the more you have to make such choices - that's the price of leadership.

School, family issues and job issues can leave one making tough choices. I take a little different view than Philso above - even if your burn out doesn't hurt you finding more help - it is going to hurt these teams if you are making it too easy to rely on a pool of resources too small. Sometimes people respect things more when they have to work for them. In the end if no one else is willing to step up maybe one should re-evaluate how this commitment fits the community.

The very first time I took a step back from FRC11 I specifically told them I felt it was time to see if it would sink or swim. It was a lot to ask from me to start FRC11 as I finished up my college education and the work to do it drove some serious issues for me. FRC11 still exists 20 years later because other people stood up to shoulder the burden: proving that the community thinks this crazy idea isn't so crazy to absolutely everyone after all. It is more gratifying to me that people continue to filter in to support FRC11/193 than that I am the hero that will be forever obligated. It means to me that I contributed to something that hopefully will survive my ability to support it (either for the ominous fact we all pass eventually or because something more critical interferes).

Karthik always says in his "Strategic Design" talk to "build within your means". From this discussion, it appears to me that it not only affects your teams success on the field in the current season but it can also affect your teams future if a team "bites off more than it can chew".

I suspect that we are really on the same page on how someone burning out affects the rest of the team. I have been part of volunteer organizations where the culture was such that only about 2% of the membership would step forward and do the necessary work. Once those people got burnt out, it made it harder to find someone to replace them because those who would normally step forward didn't because they did not want to get burnt out themselves. Usually, they had to get a naive newbie to do the work (for a year or two).

Techhelpbb creating leaders in his team is what makes the team sustainable, not some big one-time donation or some fancy piece of CNC machinery.

[Katie_UPS]

One thing my mom told me that stuck with me: You're not mentoring for your satisfaction/gain, you're mentoring for the students. If you're giving your students 1/3 of your time/energy, you're not really giving them the best mentor you can be.

I've always been taught its better to whole-arse one thing over half-arsing two things. Maybe take some time to whole-arse school because trying to third-arse school/team/team isn't doing you (or your students) any favors.

I had to stop mentoring while in school because I realized that I was paying a lot of money to get my degree and I wasn't going to be able to be a good mentor AND a good student... so mentoring could wait.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by philso

Techhelpbb creating leaders in his team is what makes the team sustainable, not some big one-time donation or some fancy piece of CNC machinery.

I doubt a tool alone will make a team successful because FIRST intentionally set the contest up in such a way that you don't need that. If one reviews the build tools FRC193 uses and FRC11 uses (we are in the same school and mentors can move between teams) you'll quickly note that FRC193 doesn't usually use most of the fancy CNC tools we have. They do just fine without all that. In fact it makes the FRC193 work more accessible to the students of all knowledge levels. That's important because FRC193 members are the first 2 years of school and move up to FRC11 which are the last 2.

On the other hand - if you goal isn't aligned entirely with the competitive angle of FIRST. If your goal is expose your students to skills that do revolve around those tools, then the presence of those tools is much more valid. In those cases the tools matter. In the same way having access to an FRC robot to deeply experiment and test matters.

My goal was always a little more grand than merely winning a FIRST game. When I was a student at that high school there was no FRC. There were rooms full of computers and people were afraid if you touched that stuff you'd break it so they did not encourage you to do so. When I was a student/valedictorian at the same time at the vocational technical school you learned the curriculum but to be honest, at least in Electronics, you never got a lot of apprentice opportunity. There was no sense of community and I knew what that was because I, like my brother, had the opportunity to apprentice with my Father (I've been working since I was 10 years old). I never even got that at the local community college. Sure you had a few select local business that drove those programs but it was a small percentage. If you took those programs the odds were you would be working for those people. No joke - my brother and I took all the same classes till we both got our Associates. My brother ended up working for a very predictable group of companies well past getting his Bachelors. Eventually that was the exact problem. Like a coal miner you entire future was embedded with those opportunities and they paid you pretty low because they had you in all directions. I always viewed this small participation as a direct weakness of the system. It was education to a goal - not always encouragement to excel even beyond that goal. This is where the opportunities those tools represent do matter. Consider this in the context of a small percentage of people doing the work and in the sense of building to the goal of competing versus inspiring something more grand.

This is also where too much tool can be a problem because too much of a tool doesn't teach you to stretch a tool's capability. You end up teaching people that robots look like FRC or any machine that isn't from Haas is too little to be meaningful. VEX proves you can teach many FRC related fundamental concepts cheaper but you still are consuming VEX. So one walks a balance to teach the tools to inspire to go beyond and merely driving consumption.

I think sometimes you need those 'big' donations: time, money or resources. I think there are opportunities where a one time shot in the arm is not just symbolic and shiny but it pays out multiple fold when it is timed correctly. Sometimes you just need to change the balance and this is true in the corporate world as well. On the other hand - if all you are doing is pouring those big donations in then you aren't being effective and maybe you should stop. Good leadership in a team would identify when those big donations are the most effective and make sure they are. Leadership can also destroy the value of these donations entirely. The leadership of some huge enterprises can easily demonstrate how you can burn billions and still deliver absolute junk.

So to say we create leaders in a team and it will be sustainable is not entirely the whole story. When you lead you need to lead in a way that inspires directions that drive values that are attractive in the community of that team. That is why FRC11 has survived 20 years. It has greatly filled a need within Mount Olive High School and the community that has made it grow. When leaders left and when leaders faded the direction still attracted new people to lead. Sure I burned myself out going BIG a few times and I wasn't always satisfied with how it played out. However I honestly don't think if we never went BIG we would be better off - I think we should just learn how to time it correctly so those moments don't burn people out. Once you do get burned out then you have a working example of were the team leadership or the community needs some work. I have seen that 'burn up the 2% kind of leadership' myself in various places but that's not really leadership we want to impart or should encourage.

For example take my interest in making a Makerspace. I burned myself out real good getting that Haas CNC stuff running for FRC11. It was too much tool for the school's need and I never asked for it. I would have been happy with a CNC router table. Instead the leadership got ambitious and went all in on the Haas. It wasn't tooled well. I pulled nearly $10,000 out of my pocket to make that right and I did so with basically no warning. When those machines came in late I warned that it would limit what we could do and honestly it wasn't heeded. The sub-team I led as mentor with the student leader did turn out several professional quality parts. We had the same parts made by professionals and the quality was the same. It was massively expensive. It drove hardship at my job because as fast as we finished one part or another there was something else on the critical path which prevented me from getting back focused entirely on my day work. In the end I had to back down from that level of commitment because it wasn't under control. It still drives value into the community and my contributions remain. I believe in the value of it I just don't believe it can reach it's full value in 6 weeks and to be honest that was what other people seemed to expect. So I set out to remove that time limit by doing it as a separate workflow from the leaderships of: FRC11, FRC193 and Mount Olive High School (also has the added benefit of not being locked to just FRC11/FRC193). In that I hope to remove the factors that burned me out and that limited the return. With that I hope to train other mentors and students that will impart knowledge and leadership back into FRC11/FRC193 and if willing other FRC teams. So I am burned out but I am not burned up. This is not to talk ill of FRC11/FRC193 either. Like stated: they don't need those Haas machines to be competitive but now they have them and one of my goals is to make sure they continue to bring value and inspiration so the unique opportunities they represent are not wasted. To achieve this are the basics of access and commitment but also to inspire people that they can do this.

To my point - I may now be less involved with mentoring CNC and leading any part of it myself for the next 7 weeks for FRC11/FRC193 but in part my contribution to the community is what will make that aspect sustainable. Leadership doesn't always have to be aligned, in fact, sometimes great leadership needs to be a touch disruptive with a vision still compatible with those being led. FRC11 is a 20 year example of leadership that: struggled, fought hard, that went BIG, that sometimes didn't get where it expected and sometimes it burned out but it still delivers on inspiration to the people it serves - hence it sustains. Maybe the stuff we collected along the way wasn't the only thing of value to the team but it is a means to an end and I am certainly not going to suggest to any donor they didn't play a role in leading that way or that their donations didn't help inspire. Especially when other teams walk through our shops and it impresses on them what can be achieved which is something I often hear from them. Maybe they don't need all that stuff to be a competitive FRC team - but they see the opportunities that FRC brought to us and it inspires them to imagine a greater future and all the cool stuff they could do (even when it's just sitting there idle).

In the end maybe that Haas experiment ends up with a new local Makerspace. That's worth something even if it hurt.

[nixiebunny]

I'm taking a year off FRC because I noticed that I haven't gotten any new products out the door in my home business since I started mentoring FRC four years ago.

I'm still mentoring our little Vex team on Saturdays only, so I have some involvement, but not the huge time commitment of the FRC build season. I've already made significant progress on shipping a new product!

The other mentors have stepped up, the team has a lot of seniors and a batch of new students, and things are going very well so far. I do plan to drop in on the team now and then during the build season to see how they're doing.

I'll be at a Vex competition during kickoff. That will be strange.