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Long story short, “The Dip” is about embracing the idea of why quitting can actually be a good thing and benefit your life and career. Quitting can actually propel you to more favourable situations and new heights when it comes to closing the wrong opportunities and opening the right ones.
A common theme to success is to “Never Give up” or “Endure the obstacles in your path” until you reach your goals. Conventional wisdom is the idea of winners who never quit, while quitters are those who never win.
While it may make sense to most people, winners actually quit a lot more often than you think. Those individuals or groups who are the bonafide number #1 in their field, whether it is in sales, athletics or business, understand how quitting the right tasks and priorities have propelled them to excel in their domain.
By covering this principles of quitting the wrong tasks and pursuing the right ones, Godin covers:
- What it means to actually QUIT
- When the right time is to QUIT
- Why we should QUIT
For those who don’t know
Long story short, Seth Godin is a legendary marketing guru and best selling author who continues to revolutionize how marketing is applied through business, careers and in our everyday lives.
Godin explains how the free market is built through countless systems that actually encourage individuals or groups to quit. Unknowingly, we participate in these systems of quitting by entering new industries and learning new skills.
The idea is not to quit for the sake of quitting but instead to:
- Quit the wrong priorities
- Pursue the right priorities
What does it mean to QUIT?
As previously stated, quitting is not just giving up when it’s hard but giving up when it’s the right move.
Traditionally, quitting was viewed as a negative action because there was a stigma where only people that don’t achieve success or are viewed as losers are the ones who tend to quit.
However, Godin views quitting as a signal to pivot directions when one realizes that there is a dead-end as opposed to a mountain where you can actually climb to the top.
The approach of quitting is to understand where you priorities, natural aptitudes and goals are, and when you realize that there is no light at the end of the tunnel in pursuing these opportunities, then it is time to find a different opportunity to pursue.
When should you QUIT?
After understanding what quitting really means, the next move would be to understand when to QUIT.
In order to determine this, Godin mapped out a decision-making framework of when to quit, with one of these frameworks being famously known as “the Dip”.
This framework contains three types of situational curves when facing a situation of when to quit or not:
The Dip is the period between starting a new task and mastering it. Usually when starting on a new venture or learning a skill, it gets exciting as there is an initial period of development.
However after this period, is when the dip occurs. After that initial burst of excitement, there is a lull of getting over obstacles, pains and understanding if there is a legitimate shot of mastering their skill or venture.
For example, if Person A is learning to play the piano for the first time and they show a natural aptitude for learning it quickly. Over time, the techniques and skills will get harder as they progress in their ability to play the piano.
Through this period, Person A will understand if they will have the ability and drive to become the next great composer OR realize that this would be too difficult and discover other opportunities.
The Cul-De-Sac (french for a passage with a closed-end) means exactly what the French translation is, a “dead-end” opportunity.
This is when one is constantly working hard at a venture or skill, but there is no improvement in results over time. No matter how hard one is working, there seems to be no aptitude or positive improvement in pursuing this venture.
Once this occurs, the best course of action is to move on quickly and find another opportunity that better suits their needs.
The last curve is the Cliff where there is a period of upward movement until there is a big crash at the end.
This happens when one is in a situation where you can’t stop until because the pain of quitting keeps increasing the longer you are in that situation.
Godin uses examples of companies that are reliant on old and slowly obsolete technologies such as newspapers and radio where there will be a large drop off, due to emerging technologies and disruptors in the marketplace to put them out of business.
Long story short, If you find yourself in the Cul-De-Sac or the Cliff situations, the best advice would be to get out of there as fast as possible.
Godin illustrates that the best curve to put yourself in, is the Dip where you can find the right opportunities and skills to maximize so that you can strive and be “the best in the world.”
Quitting to be the BEST in the World:
To be the best, it’s a matter of quitting countless opportunities before finding the right opportunity to stick with. Simply put, it’s a matter of getting a bunch of no’s before you get a yes’ when pursuing a skill or opportunity.
The primary reason why quitting is actually beneficial, is the fact that it can lead us to the opportunity to help us be the best in a particular field.
As Godin often mentions, the free market is incentivizes us to pursue the top spot in any given skill or industry. Since the free market is a zero-sum game, there can only be a select few individuals or groups who can claim to be an expertise in that domain.
In the end, those “experts” reap the majority of the benefits compared to the rest of their competitors.
Godin states:
Quitting creates scarcity, scarcity creates value.
What can WE do from here?
After understanding all of this it may make more sense to quit, in order for us to find the right opportunity to be the best in the world at.
No matter what endeavour this is, it is paramount to understand that we are choosing to quit because it makes the most sense for us, as opposed to being an impulsive decision when times get tough.
Godin would recommend to ask ourselves these three questions before quitting:
Am I Panicking? (Make sure this is not an impulsive decision)
Who am I trying to Influence? (Base you decisions on the market or industry, and not for the approval of a single person’s opinions)
What sort of measurable progress am I making? (Steady forward progress would have to had been made to continue further)
These three questions would answer if quitting is an emotional decision, or if it is the rational choice to decide to pivot from a particular opportunity.
At the end of the day, it is still OUR DECISION TO MAKE.
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Sources for this post:
#2: Godin, Seth. The Dip When to Quit (and When to Stick). Findaway World, 2007.
