Getting your doctorate degree takes a while. Learning how to excel at a new job doesn’t happen overnight. A fine wine isn’t made in a day. Sometimes, good things take a while. They don’t frequently happen overnight.

You shouldn’t be swayed by the investment in time these endeavors require. In fact, it is the time invested that makes them so valuable.

So when you’re choosing what type of fantasy draft in which to participate, don’t be afraid of auction just because they are more time-consuming. In fact, revel in the fact that more attention throughout the process often yields better results than the more passive snake format.

When you are in a snake draft – in which teams pick in a certain order, and that order is reversed each round – your options become more limited. Certain players will be beyond your reach – if you pick at the end of the first round, there’s no chance you get one of the top running backs; if you pick at the beginning, there’s no chance you get one of the top receivers (unless you make the mistake of reaching early).

In an auction, there are no such impediments. You enter the draft with no artificial barriers preventing you from acquiring any player. If you bid high enough, you can have anyone.

And that’s where the additional strategy comes into play. Instead of, in a snake draft, trying to figure out if Jimmy Goodfingers will last until the next round or not, whether you should gamble he will or waste draft capital to draft him early, the strategy of auction relies more on your acumen of player evaluation and how to negotiate the format.

First you must decide who you want to nominate when your turn comes up. (For neophytes: auction nomination runs similar to snake format, without the reversal of order. You pick a player for whom the entire league can place bids, with the highest bid winning the player).

Here’s a hint: Every team has the most available auction funds at the beginning of the draft. Hence, you are more likely to overvalue bids on players early. Thus, you should nominate players you think will go for more than they’re worth. This way, you eliminate available auction funds for other teams for players you didn’t really want anyway.

Granted, don’t be afraid to bid on those players if the auction price doesn’t rise past the point of deterrence. Say, if you nominate Todd Gurley expecting him to go for close to $40 (with a $200 budget), and his price seems to plateau at $30, don’t be afraid to bid. Just know at what point he becomes more than you want to spend.

Which brings us to the second strategic element: driving the price. When you see a player you know routinely fetches more than the current bid, and the clock is running out on a price well below that, don’t be afraid to bid, even if you don’t really want that player. There is risk, in that you could end up winning the bid. But if you have a good sense another team wants him, this is a way of getting someone else to spend more, hence taking more auction funds out of the overall draft pool.

One thing you need to decide early on is your overall strategy. In simple terms, do you want to collect as many stars as possible, thus spend little to fill out the bulk of your roster, or have a balanced collection of players? Don’t devote yourself to one or the other beforehand. Make the decision based on the bidding in each draft. If the stars are going at market price, that is a good draft to use the stars-and-scrubs technique. If the top names are going for well over value, sit back and wait and scoop up second-and third-tier players at a discount, since other teams will have a spent large portion of their budget already.

When a player is nominated who doesn’t interest you, use that time to scope other rosters. Gauge what positions will have less demand in the coming rounds: Are most teams set at WR or RB? Have a lot of QBs already been taken? Use this to determine who you will nominate. If, for example, RB is thin and there are multiple teams still in need, understand the remaining RBs likely will go for higher than value, and you will likely to need bid on them. This will affect how much you plan to spend on other positions later.

As different as auctions are, you can’t completely abandon some of the ideology you would use in a snake format. QBs are still of less value. Don’t bid high on kickers of defense/special teams, etc. What you can do is, at any point in the draft, nominate a kicker or DST and see if you can win them for $1. This is particularly useful in the middle rounds, when those willing to spend more already have, and the others are focusing every remaining dollar on more important positions.

When the late rounds arrive, the bidding will decline to the point when virtually all bids are for just $1. At this point, you should have converted to a strategy more similar to a snake, knowing you don’t want to spend more than you need, so you nominate those players you want to win for a buck.

Sure, it takes a while. And yes, you need to pay attention – the fantasy gods have a cruel sense of karma: When you leave, they tend to know, and that value pick you were waiting on will happen when you’re distracted.

But that’s OK. Extra work provides an extra reward. Don’t be afraid of the investment in time. It will be time well spent. Happy bidding!