The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

by Seth Godin

“Quitters never win and winners never quit.” Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

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.

Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail

I read a book that changed my life. It was called The Magic of Thinking Big. I

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.

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.

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. As the Declaration of Independence warns us, “all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

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.

Getting off a Cul-de-Sac is not a moral failing. It’s just smart.