Dragon or Windmill? On Picking Your Battles

Is this a dragon or a windmill?

Dragons are meant to be slayed and windmills, well, by windmills, I am borrowing from my doctoral background and training, which is in Spanish literature. I am talking about the novel Don Quijote and how in one scene the protagonist charges at windmills, telling everyone else that they are giants.

Don Quijote expends a lot of energy going after windmills.

In graduate school, I learned how to balance micro and macro goals. There is the nitty gritty, day-to-day and there's also the bigger picture. On a day-to-day basis, certain things felt like dragons that needed to be slayed, but in the bigger, macro picture, well, they were just windmills.

My final year as a doctoral student, there were many things that as a first-year graduate student, I would have thought they were dragons that needed to be slayed. In my last year, well, turns out those things were actually windmills. Perspective comes with time and distance.

You have to decide very bluntly if the time, energy, and resources you put into something are adding to your final goal (graduation) or subtracting from it (taking longer or not finishing).

For instance, I have family members with lots of medical knowledge who taught me how to navigate and deal with insurance companies. Several other graduate students approached me to serve as the health insurance liaison for the Graduate Student Association. I was flattered. I would have been good at it. The last woman who served as the liaison took an extra two years to finish her degree because the position ate up a lot of time.

So, I said no. Rather, by that point I had learned how to say no. "I'm so flattered you thought of me. I don't have the time to dedicate to the position because I'm focused on finishing my thesis by next spring."

If you are not selfish and self-interested in graduate school, you will not finish. If your goal is to earn your degree, then you have to learn how to say no.

Decide what things are windmills and what are dragons. Now, if those windmills are truly giants in your world, then go ahead and charge at them, but do so knowing you still have a dragon to slay.

I’d save my charging at large things for dragons. Is what you’re about to spend your time and energy on a windmill or a dragon?

Your dissertation is a dragon. Work on slaying it. Anything that is not the equivalent of a dragon is not worth your time or emotional energy.

Windmills can wait.

Dragons cannot, since they breathe fire and all.

Speaking of fires, you will need to learn how to decide which fires to put out and which fires to let burn. Graduate school (and as I have found out work 40 hours a week) is about triage and time management. Life is a series of questions like "What is on fire, when is something going to be set on fire, and how do I put out this fire/these fires?"

Much like the dragon vs. windmill debate, you have to ask yourself about the big picture.

Will this really matter in five years?

Ten?

Fifteen?

Twenty?

You have to balance the tunnel vision of the moment in graduate school (or a moment at work) with the larger picture of the future. The pressure and stress of graduate school often makes it seem as everything you are doing in this very moment is the most important thing in the world.

On one hand, yes, you want to make sure your class performance is positive, but you have to resist the tunnel vision and ask yourself, will I look back on this in five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years and still feel this thing was still as important now as it was back then?

Think back of the things that stressed you out five years ago. What were the things that made it feel like the sky was falling? Five years later, would they still make the sky fall for you? The more things we experience, the more likely we are to learn how to manage and handle these events.

Graduate school is very similar. At times, the expectations and events will overwhelm you. It’s natural; it’s a brand new experience you have not adapted to quite yet. When the anxiety, stress, and panic seem overwhelming, take a step back and ask yourself, “Will this really matter in five years?”

Always ask yourself, is this a dragon worth slaying or a windmill I should walk past?