The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
Godin, Seth
Being the Best in the World Is Seriously Underrated
“Quitters never win and winners never quit.” Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
Most people quit. They just don’t quit successfully. In fact, many professions and many marketplaces profit from quitters—society assumes you’re going to quit. In fact, businesses and organizations count on it.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
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. In both cases, it’s about being the best in the world.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The Surprising Value of Being the Best in the World Our culture celebrates superstars. We reward the product or the song or the organization or the employee that is number one. The rewards are heavily skewed, so much so that it’s typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the benefit of #100.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
It’s always like this (almost always, anyway). It’s called Zipf’s law, and it applies to résumés and college application rates and best-selling records and everything in between. Winners win big because the marketplace loves a winner.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
If you’ve read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail , this isn’t news to you. But I don’t care about the long tail right now—I want to show you the short head. The short, big, profitable head. That’s the juicy share of the market that belongs to the people at the top of the list.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The Reason Number One Matters People don’t have a lot of time and don’t want to take a lot of risks. If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer of the navel, you’re not going to mess around by going to a lot of doctors. You’re going to head straight for the “top guy,” the person who’s ranked the best in the world. Why screw around if you get only one chance?
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
You’re not the only person who looks for the best choice. Everyone does. As a result, the rewards for being first are enormous. It’s not a linear scale. It’s not a matter of getting a little more after giving a little more. It’s a curve, and a steep one.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The second reason there are such tremendous benefits to being number one 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.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
There are hundreds of brands of bottled water, and they’re all mostly the same. So we don’t shop around for bottled water. There is no top for bottled water. Champagne is a different story. Dom Pérignon is at or near the top, so we pay extra for it.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
Where does the scarcity come from? It comes from the hurdles that the markets and our society set up. It 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. The system depends on it.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
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. And in the world as in: their world, the world they have access to.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
So world is a pretty flexible term.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
Best is subjective. I (the consumer) get to decide, not you. World is selfish. It’s my definition, not yours. It’s the world I define, based on my convenience or my preferences. Be the best in my world and you have me, at a premium, right now.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The world is getting larger because I can now look everywhere when I want to find something (or someone). That means that the amount of variety is staggering,
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
At the same time, the world is getting smaller because the categories are getting more specialized. I can now find the best gluten-free bialys available by overnight shipping. I can find the best risk-management software for my industry, right now, online.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
So while it’s more important than ever to be the best in the world, it’s also easier— if you pick the right thing and do it all the way. More places to win, and the stakes are higher, too.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
If you’re not sold on being the best in the world, you probably don’t need the rest of what I’m about to tell you. But if you’re sold on being the best, but you’ve been frustrated in the route you’re taking to get there, then you need to start doing some quitting.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
They settle for less than they are capable of. Organizations settle too. For good enough instead of best in the world.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
If you’re not going to put in the effort to be my best possible choice, why bother? Is “Well, no one better showed up” a valid strategy for success? Are you hoping to become a success because you’re the only one being considered?
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The Biggest Mistake They Made in School Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
In a free market, we reward the exceptional. In school, we tell kids that once something gets too hard, move on and focus on the next thing. The low-hanging fruit is there to be taken; no sense wasting time climbing the tree.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
Most people will tell you that you need to persevere—to try harder, put in more hours, get more training, and work hard. “Don’t quit!” they implore. But if all you need to do to succeed is not quit, then why do organizations less motivated than yours succeed? Why do individuals less talented than you win?
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
It involves understanding the architecture of quitting, and, believe it or not, it means quitting a lot more than you do now. Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations. Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those that strive (and fail) to get what they want. And most people do just that. They quit when it’s painful and stick when they can’t be bothered to quit.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
There are two curves that define almost any type of situation facing you as you try to accomplish something.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
CURVE 1: THE DIP Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the Dip.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
At the beginning, when you first start something, it’s fun. You could be taking up golf or acupuncture or piloting a plane or doing chemistry—doesn’t matter; it’s interesting, and you get plenty of good feedback from the people around you. Over the next few days and weeks, the rapid learning you experience keeps you going. Whatever your new thing is, it’s easy to stay engaged in it. And then the Dip happens.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
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.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The Dip is the combination of bureaucracy and busywork you must deal with in order to get certified in scuba diving. The Dip is the difference between the easy “beginner” technique and the more useful “expert” approach in skiing or fashion design. The Dip is the long stretch between beginner’s luck and real accomplishment. The Dip is the set of artificial screens set up to keep people like you out.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
Successful people don’t just ride out the Dip. They don’t just buckle down and survive it. No, they lean into the Dip. They push harder, changing the rules as they go. Just because you know you’re in the Dip doesn’t mean you have to live happily with it. Dips don’t last quite as long when you whittle at them.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
CURVE 2: THE CUL-DE-SAC 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.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
There’s not a lot to say about the Cul-de-Sac except to realize that it exists and to embrace the fact that when you find one, you need to get off it, fast. That’s because a dead end is keeping you from doing something else. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
That’s it. Two big curves (a bonus, the Cliff, follows). Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources. That’s it.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
I call this curve a Cliff—it’s a situation where you can’t quit until you fall off, and the whole thing falls apart.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
If It Is Worth Doing, There’s Probably a Dip Tennis has a Dip. The difference between a mediocre club player and a regional champion isn’t inborn talent—it’s the ability to push through the moments where it’s just easier to quit. Politics has a Dip as well—it’s way more fun to win an election than to lose one, and the entire process is built around many people starting while most people quit. The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The Cul-de-Sac and the Cliff Are the Curves That Lead to Failure If you find yourself facing either of these two curves, you need to quit. Not soon, but right now. The biggest obstacle to success in life, as far as I can tell, is our inability to quit these curves soon enough
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Date: December 23, 2016 |
The people who set out to make it through the Dip—the people who invest the time and the energy and the effort to power through the Dip—those are the ones who become the best in the world. They are breaking the system because, instead of moving on to the next thing, instead of doing slightly above average and settling for what they’ve got, they embrace the challenge. For whatever reason, they refuse to abandon the quest and they push through the Dip all the way to the next level.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
Snowboarding is a hip sport. It’s fast, exciting, and reasonably priced; and it makes you look very cool. So why are there so few snowboarders? Because learning the basic skills constitutes a painful Dip. It takes a few days to get the hang of it, and, during those few days, you’ll get pretty banged up. It’s easier to quit than it is to keep going
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
The brave thing to do is to tough it out and end up on the other side—getting all the benefits that come from scarcity.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
The mature thing is not even to bother starting to snowboard because you’re probably not going to make it through the Dip.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
And the stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot, waste a lot of time and money, and quit right in the middle of the Dip.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
When Jack Welch remade GE, the most fabled decision he made was this: If we can’t be #1 or #2 in an industry, we must get out. Why sell a billion-dollar division that’s making a profit quite happily while ranking #4 in market share? Easy. Because it distracts management attention. It sucks resources and capital and focus and energy. And most of all, it teaches people in the organization that it’s okay not to be the best in the world
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
The Dip is the reason you’re here. Whether you’re lifting weights or negotiating a sale or applying for a job or lunging for a tennis ball, you’ve made a huge investment. You’ve invested time and money and effort to get to this moment. You’ve acquired the equipment and the education and the reputation…all so you can confront this Dip, right now. The Dip is the reason you’re here. It’s not enough to survive your way through this Dip. You get what you deserve when you embrace the Dip and treat it like the opportunity that it really is.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
Diversification feels like the right thing to do. Enter a new market, apply for a job in a new area, start a new sport. Who knows? This might just be the one. And yet 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 trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner. Before you enter a new market, consider what would happen if you managed to get through the Dip and win in the market you’re already in.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
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.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
Simple: 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.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
If you want to be a superstar, then you need to find a field with a steep Dip—a barrier between those who try and those who succeed. And you’ve got to get through that Dip to the other side. This isn’t for everyone. If it were, there’d be no superstars. If you choose this path, it’s because you realize that there’s a Dip, and you believe you can get through it. The Dip is actually your greatest ally because it makes the project worthwhile (and keeps others from competing with you).
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
Seven Reasons You Might Fail to Become the Best in the World You run out of time (and quit). You run out of money (and quit). You get scared (and quit). You’re not serious about it (and quit). You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit). You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard). You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don’t have the talent). By “you” I mean your team, your company, or just plain you, the job seeker, the employee, or the entrepreneur. 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 have the resources and the will 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
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
MANUFACTURING DIP—It’s easy and fun to start building something in your garage. It’s difficult and expensive to buy an injection mold, design an integrated circuit, or ramp up for large-scale production. The time and effort and cost of ramping up your operation create the Dip. The Dip keeps the supply of stuff down and insulates those brave enough to invest in scaling up their production.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
SALES DIP—Most ideas get their start when one person—you—starts selling it. Selling the idea to stores or to businesses or to consumers or even to voters. But the Dip hits when you need to upgrade to a professional sales force and scale it up. In almost every field, the competitor that’s first with a big, aggressive sales force has a huge advantage.
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Date: December 30, 2016 |
RISK DIP—Bootstrappers learn the hard way that at some point they can’t pay for it all themselves, especially out of current income. It takes a risk to rent a bigger space or invest in new techniques. Successful entrepreneurs understand the difference between investing to get through the Dip (a smart move) or investing in something that’s actually a risky crapshoot.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
RELATIONSHIP DIP—There are people and organizations that can help you later but only if you invest the time and effort to work with them now, even though now is not necessarily the easy time for you to do it. That kid who started in the mail room—who was always eager to do an errand for you or stay late to help out—she’s now the CEO. The relationships she built when it was difficult to do so paid off later.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
CONCEPTUAL DIP—You got this far operating under one set of assumptions. Abandoning those assumptions and embracing a new, bigger set may be exactly what you need to do to get to the next level.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
EGO DIP—When it’s all about you, it’s easier. Giving up control and leaning into the organization gives you leverage. Most people can’t do this; they can’t give up control or the spotlight. They get stuck in that Dip.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
DISTRIBUTION DIP—Some retailers (local strip malls, the Web) make it easy for your product to get distribution, while others (Target) require an investment from your organization that may just pay off. Getting your product into Wal-Mart is far more likely to lead to huge sales than is putting it on the Web. Why? Scarcity. Everyone is on the Web, but getting into Wal-Mart is hard.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
it’s pretty easy to determine whether something is a Cul-de-Sac or a Dip. The hard part is finding the guts to do something about it. Optimistic entrepreneurs and employees who blithely wander into a serious business, totally out-gunned and unprepared to work their way through the Dip ahead, are in danger of building a space shuttle. There’s nothing wrong with optimism. The pain (and the waste) comes when the optimists have to make hard choices when they get stuck in the Dip.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
So why don’t we cancel it? Why not quit? Same reason as always. Because day to day, it’s easier to stick with something that we’re used to, that doesn’t make too many waves, that doesn’t hurt.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
The Big Opportunity If you can get through the Dip, if you can keep going when the system is expecting you to stop, you will achieve extraordinary results. People who make it through the Dip are scarce indeed, so they generate more value.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
When you’re the best in the world, you share the benefits (the income, the attention, the privileges, the respect) with just a handful of people or organizations or brands. That male magazine model with the great abs gets work precisely because so many people have quit in their quest to get what he’s got.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
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.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
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
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Which is precisely why so few people end up as the best in the world
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
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, yes, choose it.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
He never gets anywhere because he’s always switching lines, never able to really run for it. While starting up is thrilling, it’s not until you get through the Dip that your efforts pay off. Countless entrepreneurs have perfected the starting part, but give up long before they finish paying their dues. The sad news is that when you start over, you get very little credit for how long you stood in line with your last great venture.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Please understand this: If you’re not able to get through the Dip in an exceptional way, you must quit. And quit right now. Because if your order book is 80 percent filled with prospects where you just sort of show up, you’re not only wasting your time, you’re also stealing your energy from the 20 percent of the calls where you have a chance to create a breakthrough.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
You may be sure that your product is the best in the world, but no one outside a tiny group cares at all. You’re busy pushing your new idea wherever it can go. Meanwhile, most consumers could care less about your idea or those fancy high-heeled shoes or some cutting-edge type of glue. Instead, they wait. They wait for something to be standardized, tested, inexpensive, and ready for prime time.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Microsoft failed twice with Windows, four times with Word, three times with Excel. The entire company is based on the idea of slogging through the Dip, relentlessly changing tactics but never quitting the big idea.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
If your product isn’t working, if your service isn’t catching on, if you’re not even appealing to the crazy geeks who like the new stuff, you mustn’t persist with a tactic just because you feel stuck with it
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
The Opposite of Quitting Isn’t “Waiting Around” No, the opposite of quitting is rededication. The opposite of quitting is an invigorated new strategy designed to break the problem apart.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
When people quit, they are often focused on the short-term benefits. In other words, “If it hurts; stop!”
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Who, after all, is going to drop out when the finish line is in sight? Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it. At the same time, the smartest people are realistic about not imagining light when there isn’t any
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
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?
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
If You’re Not Going to Get to #1, You Might as Well Quit Now.
If You’re Not Going to Get to #1, You Might as Well Quit Now.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
It’s okay 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 the 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
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Here’s the deal, and here’s what I told Doug: The time to look for a new job is when you don’t need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable. Go. Switch. Challenge yourself; get yourself a raise and a promotion. You owe it to your career and your skills
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Quitting Is Not the Same as Failing Strategic quitting is a conscious decision you make based on the choices that are available to you. If you realize you’re at a dead end compared with what you could be investing in, quitting is not only a reasonable choice, it’s a smart one.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Actually, quitting as a short-term strategy is a bad idea. Quitting for the long term is an excellent idea. I think the advice-giver meant to say, “Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.” Now that’s good advice.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
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, as we’ve seen, 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
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
If you’re trying to influence just one person, persistence has its limits. It’s easy to cross the line between demonstrating your commitment and being a pest. If you haven’t influenced him yet, it may very well be time to qu
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
If you’re trying to influence a market, though, the rules are different. Sure, some of the people in a market have considered you (and even rejected you). But most of the people in the market have never even heard of you. The market doesn’t have just one mind. Different people in the market are seeking different things
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, told me, “We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we’d make a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better.”
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
The seduction of not quitting—and the source of all those stories about sticking it out—almost always comes from people moving through a market. When you hear about an author who got turned down thirty times before signing with a publisher or of an overnight sensation who paid her dues for a decade in coffee shops, you’re seeing how persistence pays off across a market.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
On the other hand, when was the last time you heard about someone who stuck with a dead-end job or a dead-end relationship or a dead-end sales prospect until suddenly, one day, the person at the other end said, “Wow, I really admire your persistence; let’s change our relationship for the better”? It doesn’t happen
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Write down under what circumstances you’re willing to quit. And when. And then stick with it.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop and drop out.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |
Acknowledgments
All our successes are the same. All our failures, too. We succeed when we do something remarkable. We fail when we give up too soon. We succeed when we are the best in the world at what we do. We fail when we get distracted by tasks we don’t have the guts to quit.
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Date: December 31, 2016 |