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

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Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright Do You Zoom, Inc., 2007

All rights reserved

Illustrations by Hugh MacLeod

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Godin, Seth.

The dip : a little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick) / Seth Godin; illustrated by Hugh Macleod.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-1-1012-1634-7

1.Self-actualization (Psychology). 2. Success. 3. Success in business.4. Persistence. I. Title.

BF637.S4G63 2007
158.1dc22 2006036366 Printed in the United States of America

Set in Janson Text with Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk

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For Helene

I FEEL LIKE GIVING UP.

Almost every day, in fact. Not all day, of course, but there are moments.

My bet is that you have those moments, too. If youre the kind of high-achieving, goal-oriented person who finds herself reading a book like this, youre probably used to running 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. Sometimes we get discouraged and turn to inspirational writing, like stuff from Vince Lombardi: Quitters never win and winners never quit. Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

Most people quit. They just dont quit successfully. In fact, many professions and many marketplaces profit from quitterssociety assumes youre going to quit. In fact, businesses and organizations count on it.

If you learn about the systems that have been put in place that encourage quitting, youll be more likely to beat them. And once you understand the common sinkhole that trips up so many people (I call it the Dip), youll 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.

In both cases, its about being the best in the world. About getting through the hard stuff and coming out on the other side.

Quit the wrong stuff.

Stick with the right stuff.

Have the guts to do one or the other.

The Best in the World

Hannah Smith is a very lucky woman. Shes a law clerk at the Supreme Court. Shes the best in the world.

Last year, more than forty-two thousand people graduated from law school in the United States. And thirty-seven of them were awarded Supreme Court clerkships.

Those thirty-seven people are essentially guaranteed a job for life after they finish their year with the Court. Top law firms routinely pay a signing bonus of $200,000 or more to any clerk they are able to hire. Clerks go on to become partners, judges, and senators.

There are two things worth noting here. The first is that Hannah Smith isnt lucky at all. Shes smart and focused and incredibly hardworking.

And the second thing? That any one of the forty-two thousand people who graduated from law school last year could have had Hannahs job. Except they didnt. Not because they werent smart enough or because they came from the wrong family. No, the reason that most of them didnt have a chance is that somewhere along the way they quit. They didnt quit high school or college or law school. Instead, they quit in their quest to be the best in the world because the cost just seemed too high.

This is a very short book about a very important topic: quitting. Believe it or not, quitting is often a great strategy, a smart way to manage your life and your career. Sometimes, though, quitting is exactly the wrong thing to do. It turns out that theres a pretty simple way to tell the difference.

In addition to being smart and focused and incredibly hardworking, Hannah Smith is also a quitter. In order to get as far as shes gotten, shes quit countless other pursuits. You really cant try to do everything, especially if you intend to be the best in the world.

Before we start on the quitting, though, you probably need to be sold on why being the best in the world matters so much.

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 its typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the benefit of #100.

According to the International Ice Cream Association, these are the top ten flavors of ice cream:

Vanilla

Chocolate

Butter Pecan

Strawberry

Neapolitan

Chocolate Chip

French Vanilla

Cookies n Cream

Fudge Ripple

Praline

Youd be forgiven if you assumed, as you assume with most lists, that the top-ranked flavors did a little bit better than the others. But heres what the distribution really looked like:

Its always like this (almost always, anyway). Its called Zipfs law, and it applies to rsums and college application rates and best-selling records and everything in between. Winners win big because the marketplace loves a winner.

Heres another example; these are box-office rankings from a particularly bad week at the movies in August 2006:

Invincible

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Little Miss Sunshine

Beerfest

World Trade Center

Accepted

Snakes on a Plane

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