I love speed! I love driving fast and on the highway, I would love to go at a speed of 150, 160, 170, 180 kmph..and so on!

Once, it so happened that my partner and I were driving down from Bangalore to Chennai, and I was at my best possible speed. That was when my partner, who had been dozing beside me until then, got up and asked me, “Sunil, are we going to Chennai or to Salem?”

“To Chennai, obviously”, I replied.

He looked up and, pointing to the signboard on the highway, said, “We are going towards Salem.”

I was a little shocked. I had gotten the direction wrong and had travelled in the wrong route for almost half an hour, and now I had to turn back and reroute. It took us about an hour extra now to get back on the right track to Chennai.

It was on that day that a little question popped into my head: “What is important in life, speed or direction?” Many a time, in life, we prefer speed. We like to keep moving fast, without even knowing whether we are going in the right direction!

Nowadays, whenever I start to drive, I first look at the direction, fix a point that is going to be my destination, plan the way I need to take to reach there and, finally, focus on the speed.

In life and in business, too, we need the same kind of planning. If you are a business owner, do you have the vision in place? Is your mission in place? Are your business goals in place? Is your organisation structure in place? Is your financial model in place? Do you have all those systems and processes in place? Take it from me – only once you get all these things on board and start working can you expect to pick up speed.

Many a time, I see people jump into new businesses, taking up new things that come their way without even understanding whether they have it in them to start the new venture. They just take the plunge without understanding that they should not even be getting into certain things. And once they get into it, they make a mess out of it.

Yes – speed might be important, but direction is the key. My simple request, friends, is this. Before you begin something, ask yourself if you are going in the direction of your passion, your life, your purpose, your goals, your vision. Or are you just doing this because you simply wanted to do something?

Don’t wait until you have travelled too long and gone too far to turn back and realise that it is not what you want to do. Before you set out on a journey, ask yourself if you’re going in the right direction!