Don't Sprint The Marathon

Life mimics a marathon more than it does a sprint

Obvious as that may appear, as proud and ambitious parents, we often push our children to excel in ways that may help them achieve some early successes – but may sap their stamina to endure the more difficult challenges which life may throw at them. What is more, our obsessive rush to get our children off to a good start overlooks the fact that in life, as in a marathon, an early lead hardly matters, but being too intent on coming first may leave our children lacking in many of the life skilld that a normal childhood would teach them.

V. Raghunathan, best-selling author of Games Indians Play, offers an alternative approach that can be even more rewarding: life, he avers, is not a sprint, and it does not in the long run matter very much if you missed out on the best school, college or job as starters. As long as you give yourself the time to develop your personality and skills, you will still get where you want, at your own pace and perhaps far more happily. To illustrate, based far more happily. To illustrate, based on first-hand interactions, he gives numerous examples of many achievers, famous and not-so-famous, among them N.R. Narayana Murthy, Dr Kallam Anji Reddy, Dr. P.D.K. Rao, V. Mani, Ashwini Nachappa, Ila Bhatt and G.M. Rao. For those helping their children along for success in life, or rethinking their children along for success in life, or rethinking their own approach to it, Don't Sprint the Marathon will prove an invaluable guide.

About The Author
V. Raghunathan's first career was as an academic – as Professor of Finance at IIM, Ahmedabad, for nearly two decades, until early 2001. His second- a corporate one- started in 2001, first as President, ING Vysya Bank for about four years, and then with the GMR Group – an infrastructure major. He is currently CEO, GMR Group Varalakshmi Foundation. Also, since 1990 he has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bocconi, Milan, lecturing in behavioral finance.

Raghu has published over 400 academic papers and popular articles, and six books. He is the author of the best-seller Games Indians Play – Why We Are the Way We Are( Penguin, 2006), and Stock Exchange, Investments and Derivatives (Tata McGraw Hill,2007). He also writes a regular guest column in The Economic Times and monthly pieces in Mint and is a busy public speaker.

He has probably the largest private collection of old locks in the country, has been a cartoonist with a national daily, has played chess at all-India level, and sketched competitively in the past