Vineet Nayar in Secret Diary of an Entrepreneur (
Outlook Business) is worth reading as it touches the essence of pursuing an impossible task.
The takeaway from the interview is listed below:
On Success and Failure
That incident taught me that things happen — sometimes it’s your fault, and sometimes it’s not. You don’t have control over what happens to you, but you can decide what you are going to do about it — and that is the difference between success and failure.
On chasing impossible dreams
This taught me an important lesson, though. It’s fine to have impossible dreams. If you want to do something meaningful in life, then you have to start running without doubt, fear or panic. Just keep running. And someday, someone will throw you onto the train where you don’t belong.
On Taking up a fight
That lesson was critical for me. I still live by it. I don’t fight 90% of the battles I face; the 10% that I do pick, I fight aggressively. I have never compromised on what I believe to be right. Never. If you eventually need to compromise, you shouldn’t have picked the fight in the first place.
