‘Everyday’ Intelligence: Pick Your Battles

Have you ever felt as thought you were in the frontlines of a never- ending war, constantly exposed to a barrage of bullets and shrapnel?

Sure you have; it’s called LIFE.

Throughout the history of mankind, many great leaders have come up with various successful strategies for winning a war, namely:

• Deceive and Destroy- Trojan war
• Divide and Conquer- Caesar
• Offence is the best Defense- Chengiz Khan
• Turn war into a Crusade- The Christian Crusades
• Intimidate your Enemy- Louis XI of France
• Pull out and Regroup- Alexander the Great
• Know your Enemy- Britain at Waterloo

I shan’t go through all thirty- three strategies of war; suffice to say that the one that I have adopted and followed is:

Pick Your Battles- The Pyrrhic War

A war, you see, is a sequence of battles; it is of utmost importance, then, to remember that you CANNOT physically win ALL of the battles and must only focus on those which matter the most.

As an example, whilst at university (which has always been quite a battleground…), most of the students focus on ALL of their modules and spend and EQUAL amount of time on each and every one of them.

As most of you know, in order to get a First Class Degree in a UK university, you need to get an overall score of 70% or above.

Would it not have been easier for students to focus on the modules that they were really good at and obtained a 75-85% in them rather than focusing on everything and obtaining a 60% instead...?

Also, some students do not make use of the Past Exam papers (papers from the past five- seven years which are readily provided on the student intranet…) and think that it is a brilliant idea to cover ALL of the topics that might come up on the exam.

Why would you do such a thing when you can only focus on the ten topics that have ALWAYS come up in the past seven years?

That will give you more time to study and an opportunity to prepare for those topics on a first- class level.

In the light of the above, it is very important to realise that you must only dive into a battle when winning it would earn you more that you have lost while fighting it; rather simplistic, yet quite logical.

If you are considering a career change, for instance, you must consider whether the stress and strain that you will experience whilst looking for a new position (as well as getting use to it) will be greater than the peace of mind and satisfaction that you might get out of your new job.

You must also consider whether it is worth spending all of that energy and effort on your search rather than putting it into something which might prove to be more productive and rewarding (such as, say, teaching your dog how to scare a cat properly).

To conclude, although the abovementioned examples might sound rather dull and somewhat clichéd, I can assure you that if you pick your battles efficiently, you will be able to achieve a lot more simply because you will have more energy, determination and time at your disposal.

(As well as more money for better weapons!)

Picking battles wins the war; and that’s fact.