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

by Seth Godin

Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

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

they quit in their quest to be the best in the world because the cost just seemed too high.

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.

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.

The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.

In a competitive world, adversity is your ally. The harder it gets, the better chance you have of insulating yourself from the competition. If that adversity also causes you to quit, though, it’s all for nothing.

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.

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.

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.

Selling is about a transference of emotion, not a presentation of facts.

Short-term pain has more impact on most people than long-term benefits do, which is why it’s so important for you to amplify the long-term benefits of not quitting. You need to remind yourself of life at the other end of the Dip because it’s easier to overcome the pain of yet another unsuccessful cold call if the reality of a successful sales career is more concrete.

Who, after all, is going to drop out when the finish line is in sight?

“Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”