Time Management & You (or why the death of bag isn't death of social life.)

FIRST General Forum
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All right, Chief Delphi, let’s talk. I’ve seen a lot of sentiment floating around how with the 2019 season being the last one with a “Bag Day”, some teams feel they’ll have to work “overtime” to “stay competitive”. Others who feel “the elite will get so much better” are anxiety-ridden and worried. Ultimately, we need to calmly and rationally address these issues, but we need to analyze how a season works first, to identify the contributing factors to these anxieties.

Note: When this was written I specifically aimed to address the concerns of continental North American teams, as the issues international teams and non-continental North American teams are plentiful as a result of these changes.

"Work Fills Available Time"

Under the six week model, your team has to fit all of their work in six weeks, and that’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. However, anyone who has ever been in high-school knows that if it’s due tomorrow, you do it tomorrow. Procrastination and stretching tasks out for as long as possible are a hallmark of some folks education. That being said, now we’re in an interesting predicament, where some teams will be taking advantage of every day afforded to them under the new model. This has lead some folks to say ‘the good will get so much better’. I say bunk.
**
The 6 & ½ Week Lie**

Under the current model, top teams in FRC already worked for longer than six weeks. Practice robots, withholding allowance, and unbag time all gave teams who chose to use it effectively a competitive edge. Team 558 documented this twice on the Blue Alliance Blog. They nearly rebuilt their entire robot inbetween district events, all completely within the confines of the rules. What changes for those teams who continued to work diligently and resourcefully? Essentially nothing. They don’t have any “higher” to go competitively.

But you do.

Where We Shine

Now that bag restrictions are lifted for 2020, it gives those teams who want to put the work in, but otherwise are financially or logistically challenged a chance to rise to the occasion. Time management is no longer a function of FIRST’s deadlines arbitrarily held over from when we shipped crates to nationals, but rather a function of your team’s own planning.

Successful teams in FRC already have their own deadlines internally for what parts of the robot should be done when, when they need to get it moving, how much driver time, programming time, etc. is needed. The big sign to those teams who don’t do those things,is that the responsibility now directly falls to you.

Slow Roasting

To effectively use the time all teams now have, you can’t throw your students at problems six or seven days a week, 40+ hours a week without severely burning people out. Anxiety, stress, mental health issues aren’t inspirational, they’re antithetical to the reason this program exists. In short, effective use of time matters more than just throwing more time at problems.

Some of the most competitive teams in FRC spend less time a week on their robots in the heart of build season than people do on a part-time job, and that’s both an incredible feat in and of itself, but also a reminder to those who pour in a full time job of time or more on robots…

Rather than have eight hour meetings where work gets done for two of those, end the meeting when work stops, and make it abundantly clear that “if you’re not gonna work, we’re not gonna meet”. That way, students and mentors alike still have time to get their work done, and maintain a personal life, as well as get the robot built in a reasonable amount of time.

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of everyone on a team to fight the stigma that robots come above personal health, happiness, and all you hold dear. Make it unambiguously clear that taking time off is okay. Have team dinners, play games, hang out,and build camaraderie, and the work will be that much easier.

Conclusion
Building a robot doesn’t have to take six weeks, it can be done in less if you’re careful. The middle-rank team has so much more to gain from no bag than the upper end does, and it’s possible without more hours spent total, like if you just throw time at it until it works.

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Recommended Reading**
NYU on Time Management
Intuit on “Avoiding Burnout for Freelancers” (which FRC teams are at major junctures.)
Gantt Charts
Kanban Boards
“Build A Tower, Build A Team - TED”](https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower)

TL;DR: Don’t blame HQ for your team’s schedule that cause burnout. The onus is yours. Work to make it better, for both your (our!) collective health, and for your competitive success.

1 Like
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I posted this in another thread but this seems like a good place to post it too.

Every year we have the discussion as a team what your personal priorities should be. We tell both mentors and students that the correct answer is as follows:

  1. Self
  2. Family and friends
  3. School and/or work
  4. Robotics
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Under the current model, top teams in FRC already worked for longer than six weeks. Practice robots, withholding allowance, and unbag time all gave teams who chose to use it effectively a competitive edge. Team 558 documented this twice on the Blue Alliance Blog. They nearly rebuilt their entire robot inbetween district events, all completely within the confines of the rules. What changes for those teams who continued to work diligently and resourcefully? Essentially nothing. They don’t have any “higher” to go competitively.

But you do.

TL;DR: Don’t blame HQ for your team’s schedule that cause burnout. The onus is yours. Work to make it better, for both your (our!) collective health, and for your competitive success.
You probably should make your thread more specific to teams that can drive robots to and from events. If not, your “lie” goes out the window for some of us.
I’m not sure what you define as a “top” team, but I’d guess that while we are not elite, we would be considered a “top” team based on our successes both in competitions and other FRC related awards.
Up until this past year, we only built 1 robot during the 6 week build season during a 19 year period. We busted our butts to the point of burnout and beyond so that we could be as competitive as we could traveling to 2/3rds of our regionals outside of our State.

I also know of many others that only build during the 6 week period due to burnout and other personal reasons specific to their teams.
The fact that almost 1/2 of the current teams dont build a second robot means that there is a lot of work to help them adjust to the advantages of having no bag. It is not uniformly better for all. And for some, is impossible to take advantage of based on the new ruling.

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Glenn, you’re absolutely right that I should have. My sincere apologies. I edited my post to address this directly, especially given that international teams / non-continental teams have their own raft of issues to face given these changes.

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Yeah, I have realized that for us, the most significant thing is NOW* going to be access to a practice field (or enough of one to actually practice significant portions of the game). In past years, we have (a) built a practice robot and (b) traveled (by air a significant distance) to an early-week regional, just to have the iteration, programming, practice (including on an actual field in the early regional), and ‘out of bag’ time (i.e., Thursday at the first regional) that those two solutions provided. The total cost to our team for these things was close to $20,000 (maybe more).

Now we can keep working on our robot until our local, late-week (usually) regional. We’ll no longer need a practice robot or an earlier competition to continue improving our bot and software, or to practice driving or have access to our competition bot. All we will now get (and it’s not insignificant, but substantially shifts the cost/benefit analysis) from attending an early regional is the additional time on the field (and the extra-competition activities for our students, e.g., touring JPL). I’m not sure we can justify spending the extra entry fee ($4,000), and travel costs, just for that. Also, it will cut into our time working on the robot, due to the need to either ship it or break it down and re-assemble, re-test, etc.

So, I agree with the OP that this change is not really going to affect our meeting schedule or time spent “at robotics,” as much as it will shift our decision making regarding how many competitions to attend and probably cut down on our ‘field time’. Though, if we ever make it to Champs, maybe now we’ll actually have the $$ to attend!

I also agree with those who think it will not have as much of an impact on the “top” teams as it will on those who have struggled. It will certainly be fun if more robots are on the field on Thursday (I don’t think they should cut out the practice matches, since many teams won’t have had access to anything close to a regulation field before then), have decent autonomous routines, can contribute to an alliance in the eliminations, etc.

*well, 2020 and beyond, which I have to keep reminding myself is not “now”…

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Very interesting. I’m wondering about what time management tools to be implementing for this season that would pay off next year. I think the faster we can get to it the better. It has for years been an expansion of build until we had no other time before bag. In some ways I wonder if we should just institute a true 6 week build, excluding the drive practice and auto tuning. But after that, only approved work/changes. However, thats not a workable schedule this year. So I’m not yet sure how to start to shift the norm.

I’m sometimes curious about the less is more build time schedules, and whether it would work with our build paradigm. I’m not sure, beyond a few key points that I do see as being important. First, you waste more time with longer hours. Next, there are only so many useful tasks at some points and the people that aren’t busy distract the ones that are. And finally there is a lot about all the outside stuff whether it is homework, spouses or mental health, that will eventually be problems. But I think even teams that have figure mostly how to reduce individual build time still have mentors and students that are grinding out many hours, though possibly the time spent coordinating build group and system integration may be less prone to productivity losses.

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Sometimes a day off to just think is better than a day in the shop.

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My ideal would be sort of a rolling timeline where the shop sees lots of subgroups most days but everyone be has breaks. Not always enough people to make that work well. I’ve been trying to figure schedules better and need to studies the students habits a little better by polling when they think they will want shop time. It hasn’t always matched my expectations, and sometimes it has preferred student times don’t match with the more involved mentors’ time. A couple years back I remember a 3 mentor to 1 student Sunday, where the parents picked them up after an hour because they wanted to watch a new Marvel movie. I was happy they did. Days like that are slightly demoralizing, so we’d have been better to not have build time. Communicating about commitment to schedule is an ongoing challenge. My approach is less making more rigid attendance requirement, but trying to be flexible towards student schedules, encouraging smaller groups that can meet and police themselves, and working toward more individual ownership where they know what they should be working on.

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Very true. To be competitive, even with the bag restrictions, teams needed to improve between events. The top teams learned to do this under the bag constraints.

I disagree that the top teams “don’t have any ‘higher’ to go competitively.” The out-of-bag rules definitely constrained even those top teams. I think the teams that “nearly rebuilt their entire robot in between district events” will have a much higher ceiling when the bag no longer exists.

Re-reading the blog posting by 558 that you referenced (I’ve read it a couple times before, too), much of their creative energy, time, and costs were driven by the need to make the changes within the constraints posed by the withholding allowance and the out-of-bag restrictions. When those restrictions are lifted, a team like 558 that is willing to build a whole new robot will be able to do so in less time, more cheaply, and have more test time before the event, as they won’t have to make the changes during only out-of-bag time.

Yes, through creativity, commitment, and fundraising, 558 was able to build “a whole new robot” under the old bag constraints. Without the bag, they’ll be able to do even more! Indeed, other teams that choose to not take advantage of the opportunity to make major improvements to their robot will find themselves falling behind in relation to those willing to do so.

My impression is that the top teams make more effective use of their time. Every day that an average team has during the build season, they are able to make “N” units of progress. A top team is able to make 2N units of progress in that same day. Adding more days with unrestricted access isn’t going to enable the average teams to catch up to the top teams. It’s not like the average teams will suddenly be able to make 2N units of progress in the time after the former bag day. In the same way that the top teams distanced themselves from the average teams during the entire build season, they’ll continue to do so during the competition season, bag or no bag.

I think that contrary to the thought that getting rid of the bag gives more time for less prepared teams to catch up to the top teams, there will be an even more escalating “arms race” between teams from event-to-event-to-event, since upgrades won’t be limited to 30 pounds and what can be installed in a few hours of out-of-bag time.

I remember the “arms race” that happened with the mini-bots in 2011 and foresee such improvements will become standard for teams trying to be competitive with their whole robots. Rather than being an “equalizer” giving more time to the resource-limited teams, the additional time will give the top teams even more time to increase the separation between themselves and the rest of the teams, while causing the top teams to spend more-and-more time on the robot themselves to keep up with the other top teams. Instead of being limited to just 6 hours of hands-on time with the robot, they’ll be able to spend as much time as they can manage.

Without the constraints of the bag, the “sky is the limit” as far as how much robot rework can be done between events. Those willing to expend the most time, energy, and money in between events will have an advantage. Really resourceful teams could even work “3 shifts” on weekends – the mechanical subteam could get the robot from 6am to 2pm; drive practice from 2pm to 10pm, and software enhancements from 10pm to 6am. Just think of how much more a really committed, organized, disciplined team could accomplish!

I think this may be true for much of the team as a whole, in that “team-wide meetings” don’t occur every day. However, from what I’ve learned of those teams, all of them have a core group of people, generally both students and mentors, that do significant robot work outside of official meeting time. It’s not like all the folks on the team are “pencils down” during all of the non-meeting time – there are some that are working very hard during non-meeting times to keep the team’s accomplishments moving forward. For some teams, the non-meeting times are actually the most productive one times as far as making tangible progress with the design.

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After this announcement I’ve been thinking more about team sizes, which definitely impact how much time into the robot and how much labor can be divided. I know some competitions do restrict groups in this way. I know it is always a question about the experience stueents get . What I wonder is whether FIRST has thought about making some restrictions here before.

I was thinking about shifting the fee structure to one that was more by number of students on the team. For example, have a base registration that covers up to X number of students/mentors, then above that the fee goes up Y amount per addition person. Then use the additional money from large teams to lower the base fee.

Of course this could seriously be disruptive to the current team structure. Though not the first time a powerhouse made the decision to split into multiple teams. You wouldn’t be able to police students that don’t get registered if they are not attending events. Teams that split as a result still would be able to closely collaborate in ways the small teams still would be unable to.

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Large teams that provide meaningful work opportunities to their students do not operate on the same budget as small teams. They generally raise more funds, apply for more grants, or charge more to students to sustain their size. Asking them to also pay a larger registration fee to enter the same number of [strike]robots[/strike] robot into a competition is not something I’d support.

To me FRC has always seemed more like a mini engineering company competition than an inspiration tool. So time management, resource management, and workforce management all play into a team’s success. A well organized small team can dominate in competition over a dysfunctional large team… sort of like in the business world.

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No worries.:slight_smile:
We have a lot of work to do.