The Dip

The Dip: When to Quit & When to Stick!

By Seth Godin

Do you Want to Quit your Job?

Do you feel like quitting what you’re doing right now, but can’t muster the courage to do it because you want to be perceived as a Winner? Conventional wisdoms suggests that Winners Never Quit and they are the ones who overcome adversities no matter what’s thrown at them; they somehow manage to overcome it by tapping into their mysterious superhuman strength & abilities! What if I told you that Winners quit all the time!

Whatever endeavor you embark on (small or big), struggles are waiting for you just beyond the initial excitement. Unfortunately, facing these “Dips” is the only way you’ll be able to realize who you really are, what you’re made out of, and if the Goal you’re pursuing is worth the Pain that you’re about to endure.

Any Goal that is worth achieving is preceded by a Gap between Starting & Succeeding. This Gap involves a time of struggle when we have a choice between either Pursuing Excellence or “Strategically Quitting”, so how do we know when to Quit and when to Grit? Contrary to popular belief, avoiding hardships by doing mostly easy things won’t get you very far in life or your career and it’s even risky! Yes, risky because you deprive the world from realizing your greatest potential and set yourself on a path towards mediocrity.

The Dip

As you embark on doing things that you want and put forth more effort; you’ll start seeing good results. However, sooner or later, you’ll run into a Dip! You’ll put-in more and more effort, but will see very little progress, where your results won’t improve in contrast to your efforts. This is where most people quit after giving it a couple of tries. If however you could push through the Dip and emerge victorious after everyone else has quit, all of a sudden; you’ll be perceived to be an “Overnight Success” because you’re in the Major League of competing to become “The Best”.

The tricky part about this mysterious & scary journey is having the courage to know when to quit the wrong stuff that you’re working on & when to stick with the things that would allow you to become the best version of yourself.

To overcome the Dip, you need to embrace increasingly hard challenges in the pursuit of something that you believe is Great! It’s like working-out: To grow more muscles, you need to lift heavier weights and push yourself past your perceived limits.

Big muscles and six-packs are highly desirable because they are scarce! Interestingly, muscles only tear near the end of your workout, so people work-out for several minutes, but the benefits are realized only at the very end of the rep. That’s why sometimes the only difference between successful and unsuccessful people who work-out is the last few seconds.

This reflex is what makes big muscles and six-packs scarce and highly desirable or at least admirable. If you can become somebody who rejects “Reflexive Quitting”, you have a good chance at becoming successful. Think of your Goals as muscles: No pain, No gain!

Ironically, some systems like the gym depend on Dips, so use this knowledge to decide whether to start pursuing something or quitting. There are eight types of Dip Curves that you need to be aware of in various fields:

1. Manufacturing Dip: Your product is complicated to manufacture at scale.
2. Sales Dip: You are struggling to upgrade to a higher-scale sales campaign.
3. Education Dip: You find it hard to learn something new to reinvent or rebuild your skills.
4. Risk Dip: Knowing the difference between investing to get through The Dip & investing in something that will never work.
5. Relationship Dip: You find it difficult to put-forth the upfront effort that’s required in a relationship to get what you want out of it.
6. Conceptual Dip: You face difficulties abandoning the old operating assumptions of “Business As Usual.”
7. Ego Dip: You find it difficult to give-up control or resign from your position as CEO of the Universe to obtain success.
8. Distribution Dip: You struggle to decide which extensive distribution channels to use given their high-level of complexities.

If you’re the kind of high-achieving, goal-oriented, and aspiring person who finds themselves reading a blog like this, you’ve probably run into obstacles; professional & personal ones. Most of the time, we deal with the obstacles by persevering and plowing our way through, so what if we later find-out that we’ve been fighting for the wrong goals? Winners quit all the time, they just know when to quit the bad stuff at the right time, shift their attention, and stick with the right stuff.

The interesting thing about The Dip is that it’s not static, rather, the Dip is quite dynamic as it responds to the effort you put in. This effort should be accompanied by actions; such as, challenging the status quo, attempting to explore alternatives, and leaning into the problem through empathy. All people quit; they just don’t know how or when to quit successfully!

Society assumes that you’re going to quit, and many systems & organizations count-on the fact that you’ll give-up sooner rather than later and profit from you; like gyms.

Extraordinary benefits occur to the tiny minority of people who are able to push themselves just a little further & a bit longer than most. People who have the guts to quit early and refocus their attention & efforts on something new achieve extraordinary results.

This book summary is about the importance of Quitting Strategically, and believe it or not, quitting is often a great strategy when done correctly! It can be a smart way to manage your life and your career, but sometimes though, quitting is the wrong thing to do.

Wisdom is knowing when to make that tough call of quitting or sticking through. As it turns out, there’s a pretty simple way to tell the difference, which will be unveiled in this book summary.

Going from Zero to Hero!

Our cultures celebrate Superstars, where it rewards the organizations, the products, or the employees who are Number 1. The rewards are so heavily skewed towards Number 1 that its ten time the benefit of Number 2, and a hundred times the benefit of everything that falls afterwards. It’s always been this way in almost all fields, where there’s a big drop-off with a long tail for everything past Number 10. People don’t have a lot of time & they don’t want to take a lot of risk, so they look for the Best! For example, when you’re hiring a new employee, do you want to read through average resumes, or do you want to hire the Best applicant?

With limited time & opportunities to experiment, you intentionally narrow-down your 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 Number 1 are enormous. What’s interesting is that climbing one spot higher isn’t one spot better because it’s a non-linear scale with a steep curve that levels-out pretty quickly.

Being at the top matters a lot because there’s very little room at the very top for a select few. Scarcity makes being at the top worth something to most people, but where does scarcity come from? It comes from the perception of the hurdles that markets & our society sets-up about what constitutes The Best. It comes from the fact that most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that allows them to make it to the top!

Anyone who’s 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 out there for them. “The Best” is subjective because the consumer is the one who gets to decide, not you! This means that the stakes are much higher than doing something “Average”, and there would be much more places to go once you’ve become The Best. Plus, being on top of what you’ve decided to conquer comes with a breathtaking view!

The Three Curves

As you embark on doing something that you perceive as being meaningful to you, you’ll encounter one of the following three curves that would serve as indicators that you might need to “Stick-it Out” or “Strategically Quit”:

1. The Dip

Almost everything in life that is worth doing is preceded by & controlled by a Dip. When you start something new, it’s always fun & interesting at first. In fact, you’ll get plenty of good results for a while, plenty of early wins, and good progress, but then something changes and you experience a Dip in your results! The Dip can be described as the valley between Starting & Mastery. This long path is actually a shortcut because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path. Scarcity is the secret to Value because if there wasn’t a Dip, there’d be no Scarcity. The Dip creates Scarcity, and Scarcity creates Value, and if It’s something worth doing, then there’s probably a Dip. Encountering this curve and overcoming it will lead you to Positive Outcomes in the long-term.

2. The Dead-End (The Cul-de-Sac in French)

This is when you work, work, and work, but nothing seems to change. It doesn’t get any better, but at the same time; it doesn’t get much worse! It just is what it is! This is what you’d call a “Dead-End Job” that’s not going anywhere. If you can picture your future and realize that what you’re doing isn’t leading anywhere, then you’re riding a Dead-End curve! This curve occurs when you work extremely hard, but nothing changes! Things won’t get better, but they also won’t get considerably worse. Once you realize that you’re riding a Dead-End curve, know wholeheartedly that it’s sucking your focus & resources away from what’s important to you. Encountering this curve will neither lead to Positive nor Negative outcomes.

3. The Cliff

The Cliff curve is quite deceiving because it looks like something promising at first, but then all of a sudden; it drops-off quite rapidly & you suffer. The Cliff is a situation where you decide not to quit and stick to your guns until it all comes crashing down, where you fall flat on your face and everything falls apart because gritting while riding this curve will not lead you anywhere you want to go. Encountering this curve will lead you to negative outcomes.

Whenever you find yourself riding one of these two curves (The Dead-End & The Cliff), you need to seriously consider getting off it fast! If you’re facing either one of these two 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 for us soon enough! It might sound obvious, but the hard truth is that while we might think that we know this, we really don’t actually know the extent of it. That’s because we’d prefer not to Rock-the-Boat, to hang in there, to stick it out, and hope that it will magically get better.

If all you need to do in order for you to succeed is Not Quitting, then why do organizations less motivated than yours succeed? Why do individuals less talented than you win?

That’s because it involves understanding the architecture of quitting, and, believe it or not, it means quitting a lot more than you do right now! Strategic Quitting is the secret of successful individuals & organizations who achieve great accolades. We avoid the short-term Pain of changing our paths to something that is less familiar.

These two curves are keeping you from something else that you can’t see. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high and you deprive yourself from living a fulfilled life. Don’t you think your life is worth the risk? Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to try something different to expect different results? You never know, because you might end-up liking what you find-out about yourself!

The Grocery Store Que Experience

Let’s take a simple example of standing in-line at a grocery store to illustrate the difference between Strategic Quitting and Reactive or Serial Quitting. Think about the different types of strategies people take in the grocery store: Generally, if there are four or six checkouts open, people tend to use one of three possible techniques:

1. Pick the shortest line & stick with it no matter what.
2. Pick the shortest line, but if something delays the line (someone doesn’t have money or their credit card doesn’t work), then that person switches 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 one line to the other; always looking for a shortcut.

The problem lies in the fact that every time you switch lines, you’re starting all over again and all of your past progress didn’t count for much. In your search for a quick fix, you almost certainly waste time and you definitely waste energy jumping back-and-forth. If you’re always looking sideways for short cuts, quick breaks, or low-hanging fruits (my absolute worst), you’re never looking ahead and getting to the front of the line!

There are queues everywhere, but the Entrepreneur-Wannabe who is on their 10th startup idea, who’s always looking for a new easier opportunity to make a quick buck and get rich fast never gets to go anywhere! Starting something new is exciting at first, but sooner or later; disappointment would settle-in (The Dip), and if you’re always looking for something new you never give yourself a chance to see where it might lead you to, and you never get through the Dip!

Reactive Quitting & Serial Quitting are horrible decisions. The secret to success is actually strategically knowing when to quit. Most people quit when it’s painful & they stick with it when they don’t have the courage to quit. Most people will also tell you that you need to persevere, try harder, put-in more hours, get more training, and work harder because having a “Secured Job” is your safest bet. They insist that you shouldn’t quit, but if all you had to do was Not to Quit, then there would be so many people who’re slightly more motivated than you succeeding at what you already hate.

Now, armed with the knowledge of these curves, you can now quit more strategically by quitting the wrong stuff and sticking with the right stuff! Before you think about entering into a new market, learning a new skill, or starting a new business, consider the possibilities of what would happen if you focused your effort & managed to get through The Dip that you’re already in.

It’s human nature to quit when it hurts, but it’s that reflex that creates Scarcity. That’s why quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea (Serial or Reactive Quitting) because if the journey that you’ve started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit The Dip just wasted your time that you’ve invested. Quit the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a Serial Quitter, who starts many things, but accomplishes very little.

The Gap

Here are seven reasons that are causing The Gap between Starting & Mastery that might be causing you to come short of being The Best:

1. You run-out of time & quit.
2. You run-out of money & quit.
3. You get scared & quit.
4. You’re not serious about it & quit.
5. You lose interest or enthusiasm and settle for mediocrity & quit.
6. You focus on the short-term instead of the long-term gain & quit.
7. You pick the wrong thing to be The Best in at, where you end-up plateauing and never making it.

You need to have a candid conversation with yourself and ask: How many of the above seven reasons have I encountered while trying to pursue something meaningful for myself? The good news is that you can circumvent these excuses from manifesting and dominating your thoughts. The hard part is having the guts to do something about it! It’s easier to become mediocre than it is to confront reality and quit when you need to! Quitting is difficult because quitting requires courage and acknowledging that you’re never going to be The Best at this thing you’re working at, so it’s easier to put-off the decision until tomorrow that never comes and end-up settling for mediocrity. What a waste of human potential!

Too often we get stuck in a situation where quitting seems too painful, so we just stick with it, choosing not to quit because it’s easier than quitting. The choice to stick with it in the absence of forward progress is a total waste because of the opportunity cost where you could be doing something far better, far more pleasurable, and far more meaningful with your time. Quitting at the right time is difficult, and might be the most difficult thing that you’ll ever do. Most of us don’t have the guts to quit, and worse yet, when faced with the Dip, sometimes we don’t quit and become mediocre.

If you can get through The Dip & keep moving forward when the system is expecting you to fail and stop, you will achieve extraordinary results! People who make it through The Dip are scarce, so they generate more Value. When you’re The Best at what you do, you share the benefits with just a handful of people who’re at the top of the heap.

Too Legit to Quit!

Quitting at the right time is difficult! Most of us don’t have the guts to quit due in large part to the fear of loss, perceived worldview, and our relationship with money. Worse yet is when we’re faced with The Dip, sometimes we don’t quit and continue plowing through & end-up becoming mediocre without even realizing it. The most common response to The Dip is to play it safe; especially when it comes to career decisions. When faced with The Dip, most people bite their tongs and try to average their way to success, but you and I know that hardly ever works. This is precisely why very few people end-up as being The Best in their field.

Sometimes quitting is the wisest decision you could make, so the next time you catch yourself being average & feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Being Exceptional or Quitting! If you realize that you’re significantly overinvesting time & money with very little progress to show, you should consider shifting from your niche to another one, where you could be The Best!

If you’re considering quitting what you’re doing, here are three questions that you should ask yourself before committing to your decision of quitting or sticking-it out:

1. Am I Panicking?
   Quitting is not the same as panicking! If you are panicking, this is the worst moment for you to decide to quit, so wait until you can think straight and never base your decision to quit or grit during crucial moments. The decision to quit is often made during crucial moments, but that’s exactly the wrong time to make a 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. When the pressure is greatest to compromise; to drop-out or to settle, your desire to quit should be at its lowest.
2. Whom I Trying to Influence?
   If you’re trying to influence just one person, persistence has its limits. If however you’re trying to influence a market, the rules are different because most of the people in the market have never even heard of you! The market doesn’t have just one-mind, instead, different people in the market are seeking different things, and it’s your job to figure-out how to alleviate their pain. In fact, conquering any market is a hill that you need to climb in order for you to succeed in any kind of business.
3. What Kind of Measurable Progress am I Making?
   Your steps towards success may be small, but you need to proceed even when you feel that you’re sitting idle (momentarily). 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. Try to understand if you are moving forward, standing still, or worse, falling behind by measuring your performance against some form of industry standard.

Good quitters mentally state in advance when to quit by setting goals and deadlines for themselves, which allows them to know if it’s time to abandon what they’re doing or work harder! To be a Superstar, you must do something extraordinary and not just “Survive” The Dip, but use The Dip as an opportunity to grow & create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and even choose it.

Whatever you do in life, you’re actually trying to Sell something! Selling an idea, selling your product or service, or even selling yourself. The best people that I’ve ever come across who could Sell almost anything are those who’ve overcome the deepest of Dips! Selling is about the “Transfer of Emotion” and NOT the presentation of Facts & Figures. If it were truly just about Facts & Figures, then a PDF flyer, WhatsApp message, or a website would have sufficed to make the Sale!

It’s OK to quit sometimes! In fact, it’s OK to quit often, you just have to do it strategically. You should quit if you’re on a Dead-End path or facing a Cliff. You should quit if the project you’re working on has a Dip that isn’t what makes you special and worth seeking-out. Quitting projects that don’t go anywhere is essential if you want to grit your way through the ones that are right for you. You don’t have the time, passion, or the resources to be The Best in what you do at more than one thing, so decide what you want to be The Best at in your realm.

The Dip feels like your enemy, but it doesn’t have to be that way because The Dip could actually become your greatest ally! The Dip is exactly what makes you grow as you discover who you really are and it makes the projects that you’re pursuing worthwhile because the difficulties of overcoming The Dip keeps competition at bay. You need to find The Dip that can challenge your knowledge & skills with enough Desired Difficulties that you could conquer. At the same token, you also need to quit all the Dead-Ends that you’re currently idling your way through. You must quit endeavors that don’t offer you the same opportunity for growth and self-discovery. It’s difficult, but vitally important because being better than 98% of the competition used to be fine, but in a world with Google, it’s worthless! The competition is always one-click away, so only one position matters: The Best!

The Dip describes the importance of understanding when you should quit and when you should stick with it. The reality is that many of us quit too early, where we see a Dip and assume that we are going to fail catastrophically. However, the reality of the matter is that some Dips are just part of your journey towards success, while others are signs that you are destined to fail not because you’re a failure, but rather because this is not where you can thrive the most. The Dips that suggest that you should quit are Cliffs and Dead-Ends. Try to notice when you experience these Dips and quit while you’re still ahead, and if the Dip doesn’t fit these two descriptions, it might be better for you to stick-it out to see where things might go!

Takeaways

1. Almost everything in life worth doing is preceded by a Dip.
2. The Dip is the long trail between starting something and the mastery of it.
3. The Dip that precedes worthwhile things creates scarcity, and scarcity creates value.
4. Failure is being “Average” at something, and you will never average your way to success, so sometimes quitting what’s not working for you is your best option.
5. Winners quit all the time, they just quit the right stuff at the right time.
6. Quitting is not a moral failing, where in some scenarios, it’s actually essential for freeing-up your resources to get through The Dips that matter to you.
7. When it comes to evaluating the results you expect compared to the effort you put forth, there are three types of expected outcomes: a Dip, a Dead-End, or a Cliff.
8. If It’s worth doing, it’s probably a Dip, which can be defined as the valley that separates Starting from Mastery and overcoming The Dip is the prerequisite for becoming The Best!
9. It’s not enough to survive your way through the Dip, where you get what you deserve when you embrace the Dip and treat it like an opportunity for growth through adversity.
10. When you experience the Dip, you’ll be surprised to learn more about yourself, your limits, and your abilities to achieve things that used to be dreams & wishful thoughts in your head.
11. It’s human nature to quit when it hurts, but it’s that pain that creates scarcity because it serves as an impenetrable barrier to success that only the serious ones can get through.
12. Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea because if the journey you’ve started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip was a waste of time you’ve already invested in.
13. When you quit in the Dip often enough, you’ll find yourself becoming a “Serial Quitter”: a person who starts many things, but accomplishes very little.
14. People settle for “Good Enough” instead of being The Best in the world because they can’t see how the Pain today is worth the Gain tomorrow.
15. Being “Well-Rounded” is not the secret to success; instead it’s synonymous to “Mediocre!”
16. The decision to quit or not is a simple evaluation: Is the Pain of the Dip worth the Gain of the light at the end of the tunnel?
17. Being the very best at what you do will bring you higher profits than being second or one of the best.
18. Winners understand that enduring pain now prevents a lot more pain later on.
19. Quitting as a short-term strategy to alleviate the pain that you’re experiencing is a bad idea.
20. Quitting for the long-term is an excellent idea because it frees you up to excel at something that you’re good at.
21. In a competitive world, adversity is your greatest ally, and the harder it gets, the better chance you have at distinguishing yourself from the competition.
22. If you want to be a Superstar in your field, then find a field with a steep Dip (barrier-to-entry between those who try & those who succeed) and you’ll get through that Dip to the other side!
23. Strategic quitting is a conscious decision that you make based on the choices that are available to you.
24. If you realize you’re at a dead-end compared with what you could be thriving at, quitting isn’t only a reasonable choice, it’s actually the smart thing to do!
25. If you manage to get through the Dip when the system expects you to fail, you’ll achieve extraordinary results.
26. To become a Superstar, you must do something extraordinary by not just surviving the Dip, but using the Dip to thrive & grow by creating something so remarkable that you demand people to notice what you do.
27. When you thrive by coming-through the Dip, people can’t help but talk about what you do, recommend it, and yes, even choose it amongst other available options!
28. If you’re unable to get through the Dip in an exceptional way despite multiple attempts, that’s when you know that you must quit because sometimes you have to Lose to Win in the long-run!
29. If you want to be a Winner in the long-run, you’ll have to master the art of “Smart Quitting.”
30. “Smart Quitting” is not failing, it’s a way to avoid eminent failure.

The Maverick

www.DarTec.com.sa

hashim@dartec.com.sa