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Recently I read another Seth Godin book titled “The Dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick)”. Though I would not classify it in the same category as ‘The Practice’ or ‘This is Marketing’, it nevertheless is a very good book with a lot of wise one-liners that are typical of Seth Godin’s writing.
Here, I have compiled and reproduced a few of them that I found profound and stuck with me.
Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most. Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.
The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.
The Cul-de-Sac (French for “dead end”) is so simple it doesn’t even need a chart. It’s a situation where you work and you work and you work and nothing much changes. It doesn’t get a lot better, it doesn’t get a lot worse. It just is.
Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources. That’s it.
The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.
If you’re going to quit, quit before you start. Reject the system. Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world.
The decision to quit or not is a simple evaluation: Is the pain of the Dip worth the benefit of the light at the end of the tunnel?
The best quitters, as we’ve seen, are the ones who decide in advance when they’re going to quit.
To succeed, to get to that light at the end of the tunnel, you’ve got to make some sort of forward progress, no matter how small.
Figure out how much pressure you’ve got available, then pick your tire. Not too big, not too small.