The Dip
by Seth Godin

  • Personal Development
  • Ashto = 10/10
  • Jonesy = 9/10
The Dip

The Dip – by Seth Godin

A great short book that explains why there’s always a ‘dip’ in your projects on your journey to becoming the best in the world – be that getting a promotion, building a business, writing a book, falling in love… anything! At the start, as you put in more effort you’ll see good results. Then, there’s a dip. You’ll put in more and more effort but your results won’t improve. This is where most people quit. If you can push through the dip after everyone else has quit, all of a sudden you’ll appear to be an overnight success because you’ve become the best in the world.

SUBTITLE: “The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick)”

We feel like giving up. Almost every day in fact. Not all day of course, but there are always moments. Our bet is that you have those moments too…

If you’re the kind of high-achieving, goal-oriented person who finds themself listening to a podcast like this or reading a blog like this, you’ve probably run into obstacles. Professional obstacles. Personal obstacles. Even obstacles related to personal fitness or winning board games. Most of the time, we deal with the obstacles by persevering. Maybe we see an inspirational quote, like the famous NFL coach Vince Lombardi: “Quitters never win and winners never quit”. But this is BAD ADVICE. Winners quit all the time! They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

Most people quit – they just don’t quit successfully. Society assumes that you’re going to quit, and many systems and organisations count on (and profit from) the fact that you’ll give up sooner or later. BUT – if you learn about the systems that have been put in front of you that encourage quitting, you’ll be more likely to beat them. And once you understand the common sinkhole that trips up so many people, the thing Seth Godin calls THE DIP, you’ll be one step closer to getting through it.

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 is a very short book about a very important topic: QUITTING. We’ve done the book GRIT, where the author says that perseverance and NOT quitting is what makes you successful. But The Dip talks about the importance of quitting strategically. Believe it or not, quitting is often a great strategy. It can be a smart way to manage your life and your career. Sometimes though, quitting is exactly the WRONG thing to do… it turns out that there’s a pretty simple way to tell the difference.

THIS BOOK IN THREE LINES:
Quit the wrong stuff.
Stick with the right stuff.
Have the guts to do one or the other.

“Best In The World”

The Surprising Value of Being Best In The World

Our culture celebrates the superstars. We reward the product or the song or the organisation or the employee that is Number 1. The rewards are so heavily skewed, so much so that its typical for #1 to get ten time the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the benefit of #100.

For example, The International Ice Cream Association lists these top 10 flavours. You’ve got Vanilla at #1, Strawberry at #3, Neapolitan at #5, Cookies and Cream at #8, and so on. When you look at the percentage of sales each one has, Vanilla is at the top with 30%. Chocolate at #2 only has 8%, then Fudge Ripple at #9 is below 2%. The #1 (Vanilla) has more than 10X the sales of #10 (Praline)

Zipf’s Law

It’s ALWAYS been like this, in almost all fields. This “power law distribution” – it looks like a back-to-front exponential curve. The number 1 is really high, then there’s a big drop off, until there is a long tail where everything past #10 is very very small. Zipf’s Law applies to resumes, college applications, best-selling books… everything!

The Long Tail VS The Short Head

The long tail is great for iTunes Store and Amazon, because they own THE WHOLE TAIL. Apple doesn’t care that most songs have one or two purchases a year. Amazon doesn’t care that most kindle books sell less than 10 copies in their entire lifespan. They don’t care because they get a % cut of EVERYTHING that is sold – they don’t care if 1 book sells 100 copies or if there are 100 books that sell 1 copy each – the outcome for them is the same.

But for the individual, it matters A LOT. You can be one of the no-hopers in the longer tail selling one album a year…. or you can climb your way into the short head, where you get exponentially better results

The Reason #1 Matters

People don’t have a lot of time, and they don’t want to take a lot of risk. If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer of the pinky toe, you’re not going to spend time trawling through all of the different pinky toe doctors available… you’re going to go straight to the “BEST DOCTOR”. Why screw around if you only have one chance? When you visit a new town on a holiday… are you going to a typical restaurant, or are you going to the BEST restaurant? When you’re hiring a new team member, do you want to read through average resumes, or do you want to hire the BEST applicant?

With limited time and limited opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top. You’re not the only one who looks for the best – everyone does. As a result, the rewards for being #1 are enormous. It’s a non-linear scale – getting climbing one spot higher isn;t one spot better, it’s exponentially better. it’s a steep curve.

The REAL Reason Number One Matters

The second reason is a little more subtle. Being at the top matters because there’s room at the top for only a few. Scarcity makes being at the top WORTH something. Where does the scarcity come from? It comes from the hurdles that the markets and our society set up. Its comes from the fact that most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that makes it to the top. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, that’s the way it needs to be – the system depends on it.

The Best In The World?

Anyone who is going to hire you, buy from you, recommend you, vote for you, or do what you want them to do is going to wonder if you’re the BEST choice.

  • “BEST” = as in, best for them, right now, based on what they believe and what they know
  • “THE WORLD” = as in, their world, the world they have access to

If we were looking for an editor for our weekly blog posts, then we are looking for the best freelance copy editor who speaks English, who is available to work now and work for a few hours each and every week, and who we can find to work with us at an affordable price. That’s our “best in the world”. If you want a hernia doctor, then your world probably shrinks from anyone you can access over the internet to anyone you can access face to face that can perform the procedure.

“BEST” is subjective – the consumer gets to decide, not you. “WORLD” is selfish – it’s the consumer’s definition, not yours. Everyone’s “WORLD” is defined by the preferences and their conveniences.

The world is getting larger. Because now you can look EVERYWHERE when you want to find something (or someone). The amount of variety is staggering. The world is defined to be exactly what an individual is interested in, and they can find their preferences anywhere on the planet.

At the same time, the world is getting smaller – because the categories are getting more and more specialised. We’re no longer looking for “a good book to read”, we’re now looking for the best book on the applications of game theory to business that we can get free shipping to our door by tomorrow. We’re no longer looking for a budget steak, we’re looking for beef from a specific region of japan where the cows get massaged every morning and night and hand fed fresh grass clippings. We’re no longer looking for comfortable clothing, we’re looking for the best active wear that is made from all natural products by cruelty free labour.

So while it’s more important than ever to become the best in the world, because people ONLY want the best, it’s also easier… IF you pick the right thing and do it all the way. The stakes are much higher, but there are more places to win.

The Three Curves

The Cul De Sac

This first curve is where you work and work and work… but nothing changes. It doesn’t get a lot better, it doesn’t get a lot worse… it just is what it is. This is what you’d call a “dead end job” – it’s not going anywhere.
It’s vital that you recognise Cul-de-Sacs in your life. If you look to the future and realise that it isn’t leading anywhere…. they you’re on a cul de sac.

Whenever you find one of these, you need to get off it fast. This dead end is keeping you from something else. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high.

The Cliff

The cliff looks like something potentially promising at first… but then all of a sudden it drops off rapidly and you suffer. The cliff is a situation like this where you don’t quit… until you fall off the other end and everything falls apart.

One example is smoking. Cigarettes were designed to be extremely addictive. At first you hate the smell and the taste and the feeling… but as you smoke a little more, you think you enjoy it more and more. But if you KEEP smoking, then there’s a nasty drop off at the end… emphysema, lung cancer, or a whole host of other health issues that hit all at once. Smoking is the marketer’s dream – it’s almost impossible to quit because the longer you do it the better you think it feels to continue… the pain of quitting gets bigger and bigger over time.

Other cliffs might include: stealing from work, cheating on your partner, lieing to customers. You can recognise this in many movies about troubled heroes – the hot shot lawyer or banker, or the superstar baseballer or basketballer. They’re fuelled by drugs, lies, power, women, dodgy deals. They’re riding high, and the more success they achieve the more they want. Everything is going well… until it all comes crashing down. Their wife catches them cheating in the bedroom, the accountant catches them cheating on their investments, their sport catches them cheating on the field by using performance enhancing substances. They couldn’t quit while they were riding high, but the cliff was inevitable.

Failure

Cul de sacs & Cliffs lead to failure. If you’re facing either one of these curves, you need to quit. Not SOON… but RIGHT NOW. “The biggest obstacle to success in life is our inability to quit what isn’t working soon enough”. It might sound obvious… quit what isn’t working…. but the hard truth is that while we THINK we know this, we DON’T actually know it… or, at least, we don’t actually DO it.

When it comes right down to it, we aren’t quitting any project that isn’t leading to where we want it to go. We prefer not to rock the boat, to hang in there, to stick it out and hope that it’ll get better. We avoid the short-term hassle of changing paths.

THE DIP

This brings us to the big papa. We’ve seen the curves that don’t work… now it’s time to reveal the only curve that DOES work: The Dip.

Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by a Dip. At the beginning, when you first start something, it’s fun. You could be taking up golf or acupuncture or piloting a plane or learning the harmonica or doing chemistry. It doesn’t matter – in the beginning, it’s interesting, and you get plenty of good feedback from people around you and plenty of early wins and progress.

Over the next few days or weeks, the rapid leaning you’re experiencing keeps you going. whatever the new thing is, it’s easy to stay engaged with it. And then The Dip happens…

The Dip is the long hard 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 Dip could be the textbooks and the paperwork you have to go through to get your scuba diving licence. The Dip on the harmonica is the difference between the easy “beginner” songs with the pucker style, and the more useful “expert” approaches of tongue blocking and bending. The Sip is the long stretch between beginner’s luck and real accomplishment.

It’s easy to BE a CEO… what’s hard is GETTING there. There’s a huge dip along the way. If it were easy, there’d be too many people vying for the job, and the CEOs wouldn’t get paid anywhere near as much. Scarcity is the secret to value. If there wasn’t a Dip, there’d be no scarcity. If It’s Worth Doing, There’s Probably A Dip. The Dip creates scarcity, and scarcity creates value.

What To Do About Them

Quit the cliffs, they’re not leading anywhere you want to go.

Quit the cul de sacs – they’re sucking your focus and resources away from what’s important.

Stick with the Dips. It’ll be hard, but that’s your only option.

Most people will tell you that you need to persevere – to try harder, to put in more hours, get more training, work hard. “Don’t quit!”, everyone says. But if all you had to do was not quit, then there would be so many people less motivated than you succeeding too.

The secret to success is actually STRATEGIC QUITTING. REACTIVE quitting and SERIAL quitting are horrible decisions. People quit when it’s painful and they stick when they don’t have the guts to quit. But armed with the knowledge of the curves, you can now quit more strategically – quitting the wrong stuff and sticking with the right stuff.

Why You Shouldn’t Quit

Serial Quitters Spend A Lot Of Time In Line

Think about the different types of strategies people use in the supermarket. Generally if there are 4 or 5 checkouts open – people use one of three possible techniques.

  1. Pick the shortest line, get in it, and stick there no matter what.
  2. Pick the shortest line, but if something holds up your line (someone doesn’t have money on their card, the have a complaint or detect a faulty item), then you can switch ONCE (at a maximum) to a line that’s moving quicker
  3. Pick the shortest line – then keep scanning for the shortest, and keep jumping from line to line, always looking for a short cut

But the problem here is, every time you switch, you’re starting over. In your search for a quick fix, you almost certainly waste time and you definitely waste energy jumping back and forth. Remember that if you’re always looking sideways for short cuts, you’re never looking ahead and getting to the front of the line. There are queues everywhere. The entrepreneur wannabe who is on their 12th startup idea, always looking for a new, easier opportunity… but they’re never going to get anywhere. Starting something new is exciting, but if you’re always looking for something new you never get a good run at it, and you never get through the Dip

What The Woodpecker Knows

When faced with a Dip, many people choose to diversify to give themselves more options. If you can’t get to the next level in your pursuit, you think you should spread your efforts to add another string to your bow.

Record labels have thousands of artists they need to promote, book publishers have thousands of authors they try to support, instead of taking a risk and sticking with the ones that show the most promise. Job seekers feel they need to show proficiency/competency in a dozen different tasks, rather than mastery of one. Diversification feels like the right thing to do.

But the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world.

A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand different trees and still be hungry. Or he can pick one tree, tap twenty thousand times, and get dinner.

Before you think about entering a new market or learning a new skill, or starting a new business… consider what would happen if you focused your efforts and managed to get through The Dip that you’re already in.

What Arnold Knows

Putting big muscles and six packs on the front cover of Men’s Health makes sales go up. Why? because these things are rare and hard to obtain. The very scarcity is what makes it desirable.

Weight training is a fascinating science. Basically, you do one to two minutes of work for no reason, other than to tire your muscles out. It is only the last few seconds of work that causes the muscle to grow. People who train successfully pay their dues for the first minute or two, then get all the benefits at the very end. Unsuccessful trainers pay exactly the same dues, but stop a few seconds short of the gold.

It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. but it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. SO – 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 time you’ve already invested. Quit the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter – starting many things but accomplishing little.

SEVEN REASONS You Might Fail To Become Best In The World

  • you run out of time (and quit)
  • you run out of money (and quit)
  • you get scare (and quit)
  • you’re not serious about it (and quit)
  • you lose interest or enthusiasm and settle for mediocre (and quit)
  • you focus on the short term instead of the long term (and quit when the short term gets too hard)
  • OR – you pick the wrong thing to be best in the world at and never make it

The important thing to remember about these seven things is that you can plan for them. You can know BEFORE you start whether or not you will have the resources to get to the end. Most of the time, if you fail to become the best in the world, it’s either because you planned wrong or because you gave up before you reached your goal. If you realise that you DON’T have the resources (the time, the money, the courage, the enthusiasm).

If you’re going to quit, then quit BEFORE you start. Reject the system, don’t get caught in the all-too-common trap. Don’t play the game if you realise you can’t be best in the world.

SIMPLE SOLUTION: if you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start. If you can embrace that simple rule, you’ll be a lot choosier about which journeys you start. It’s pretty easy to determine if something is a Cul-De Sac or a Dip. The hard part is having the guts to do something about it.

Why You Should Quit

What Jack Knows

When Jack Welch built General Electric, he made one famous decision: if we can’t be #1 or #2 in an industry, then we have to get out. He was happy to sell a product line that was turning over a billion dollars a year, IF it was stuck at #4 in the industry. Anything where they didn’t have a chance of being “the best” was just a distraction for management – it sucked resources and capital and focus away from the areas where they could get through the Dip and get to the top. This decision also sent the signal to everyone in the organisation that its not ok NOT to be the best in the world.By quitting the dead ends, Jack freed up resources to get the remaining business through The Dip.

Most People Are Afraid To Quit

It’s easier to be mediocre than it is to confront reality and quit. Quitting is difficult. Quitting requires you to acknowledge that you’re never going to be #1 in the world. At least not at this thing. So it’s easier to put off that harsh decision, not admit it to yourself, and settle for mediocrity… what a waste.

Average Is For Losers

Quitting at the right time is difficult. Most of us don’t have the guts to quit. Worse, when faced with the Dip, sometimes we don’t quit… instead, we get mediocre

The most common response to the Dip is to play it safe. To do ordinary work, blameless work, work that’s beyond reproach. When faced with the Dip, most people suck it up and try to average their way to success. This is precisely why so few people end up as best in the world. To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just “survive” the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and choose it.

The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realise that you have only two good choices: QUIT or BE EXCEPTIONAL. Average is for losers.

The Dip feels like an enemy, the dragon you have to battle in order to get the pot of gold, but it’s actually your greatest ally. The Dip is exactly what makes the project worthwhile (and keeps others from competing with you). Not only do you need to find a Dip that you can conquer, but you also need to quit all the Cul-De-Sacs that you’re currently idling your way through. You must quit projects and investments and endeavours that don’t offer you the same opportunity. It’s difficult, but it’s vitally important. Being better than 98% of the competition used to be fine, but in the world of Google, it’s useless. The competition is always one click away. only one position matters – best in the world.

Quitting

If You’re Not Going To Get To #1, You Might As Well Quit Now

QUIT!

It’s OK to quit sometimes. In fact, it’s okay to quit OFTEN. You should quit if you’re on a dead-end path. You should quit if you’re facing a Cliff. You should quit if the project you’re working on has a Dip that isn’t worth the reward at the end

Quitting projects that don’t go anywhere is essential if you want to stick out the right ones. You don’t have the time or the passion or the resources to be the best in the world at both.

Quitting A Tactic VS Quitting A Strategy

Quitting is important, but we’re not talking about giving up and abandoning your long term strategy. Whatever your long term strategy is, and wherever you’re using it (relationship, career, income, sale, business, etc) – you have to stick with this. BUT you do have to quit the TACTICS that aren’t working.

Getting off a Cul-De-Sac is not a moral failing, it’s just smart. Seeing a Cliff coming far in advance isn’t a sign of weakness. Instead, it represents real insight and bravery. It frees up your energy for the Dip.

Quitting Before You Start

Write down under what circumstances you’re willing to quit, and then stick with it.

Deciding In Advance When To Quit

Ultramarathoner Dick Collins: “Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop and drop out. you don’t want to be out there saying ‘well gee, my legs hurt, i’m a little dehydrated, im sleepy, i’m tired, it’s cold and windy”, then talk yourself into quitting. If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision”

SO – if quitting is going to be a strategic decision that enables youto make smart choices in the marketplace, then you should outline your quitting strategy BEFORE the discomfort sets in

Two Questions To Ask Before Quitting

QUESTION 1: Am I Panicking?
Quitting is not the same as panicking. Panic is never premeditated. Panic attacks us, it grabs us, it is in the moment. Quitting when you’re panicked is dangerous and expensive.

The best quitters are the ones who DECIDE IN ADVANCE when they’re going to quit. You can always quit later – so wait until you’re done panicking to decide. When the pressure is greatest to compromise, to drop out, or to settle, your desire to quit should be at its lowest.

The decision to quit is often made in the moment. But that’s exactly the wrong time to make such a critical decision. The reason so many of us quit in the Dip is that without a compass or a plan, the easiest thing to do is give up. While that might be the easiest path, it’s also the least successful one.

QUESTION 2: What Sort Of Measurable Progress Am I Making?
If you’re trying to succeed in a job or a relationship or at a task, you’re either moving forward, falling behind, or standing still. There are only three choices. 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.

Too often we get stuck in a situation where quitting seems too painful, so we just stay with it, choosing not to quit because it’s easier than quitting. That choice – to stick with it in the absence of forward progress – is a waste. It’s a waste because of the opportunity cost – you could be doing something far better, and far more pleasurable, with your time. Measurable progress isn’t just a raise or a promotion – it can be much more subtle than that. “Surviving is succeeding” is completely wrong – instead, we need to surface new milestones where there previous were none, so we know that we’re moving forward.

THIS BOOK IN THREE LINES:

Quit the wrong stuff.
Stick with the right stuff.
Have the guts to do one or the other.

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