Posted by Michael Moore-Jones on June 27, 2011 12:35 am

The Dip: Why You Have To Quit To Be The Best

“Never give up”. “Don’t be a quitter”. “Quitters never win”. I’m sure you’ve all heard something along those lines – maybe some of you have even had it drilled into you at some point. I’ve had a personal experience with those sayings when I tried playing piano and then guitar in quick succession, and gave up on both after I had extreme difficulty with it and wasn’t making any progress.

Throughout reading Seth Godin’s book The Dip, I was a shocked, as his thesis goes against the values we are brought up with. We are taught that quitting is something we must not do, ever. It’s like giving in. Our entire education systems are based around this concept of not quitting – we have to go through the process from years 1 to 13, then university, slogging away at work without quitting.

Seth Godin says that quitting is a good thing, and no one will ever become the best at anything unless they are good at quitting.

The book starts with Godin describing why you have to be the best. It’s entirely relevant to the book, and very interesting. If you look at the rewards given to the winner in an industry, the rewards are usually even ten times greater than those received by the the company who comes second in any industry. The example used in the book is that of ice cream flavours. Of all the flavours, vanilla is by far the most popular, even more popular than chocolate. So we might expect that it has marginally higher sales than chocolate ice cream. But in fact, it has many times more sales than chocolate and most other flavours combined. It’s a simple analogy, but it shows why we need to be the best in whatever we do. Just look at Google search results – the first result on Google is clicked on more than ten times more than the second Google search result. That’s why you need to be best.

Godin then argues that you will never be the best in anything unless you learn to quit intelligently. He says that if we don’t quit then we’ll simply spend our time working on projects or in jobs that are in fact either a cul-de-sac or a cliff. These are terms he uses to describe jobs or projects that are a complete waste of time, because you’ll either spend your whole life working on them but they’ll never get you anywhere, or you’ll work on them for a while and then fail miserably.

His entire book is about learning when to quit, and when to stick with something.

How does “The Dip” come into it? The Dip is what every person experiences in almost anything that they start. Imagine you’re learning to play golf. At the start it’s new and exciting, and the time spent at the driving range practicing is fun and fulfilling because you have a lot of room to improve. But after a while the practice starts to become not so fun. You don’t see the improvements like you used to. You start to get blisters on your hands because you’ve played too much. It starts to chew into too much of your time. And then you start thinking about whether golf really is for you, and if you’ll ever become good.

It’s the same for anything you’re starting. Whether you’re an entrepreneur starting a new business or someone starting an undergrad degree at college – you’ll experience the dip.

The first thing Godin advises is that if you won’t become the best at whatever you’re starting, there’s no point in trying to get past The Dip and succeed. He says you should quit straight away and focus your time and money on something that you can become the best at. Remember, it makes sense to be the best, not just above average, because the rewards are unequally skewed. In essence, Godin says that you should quit as soon as you realize something’s not worth going on to do. But it’s best to quit before you get to The Dip, because then you haven’t wasted as much time and effort.

The whole book challenged the way I think about a lot of things, because I’ve been taught to view challenges the way our education system deems we should. In some ways it’s dangerous that we think we should never give up, because it means so many people in society will never make a good contribution to society and do what they love because they’re stuck with something they’re too proud to quit. If I could choose one quote from the text to share, it’s this:

“Never Quit”.

What a spectacularly bad piece of advice. I think the advice giver meant to say “Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment”.

Now that’s good advice.

http://facelesstrader.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/business-book-review-seth-godins-the-dip/ Business Book Review – Seth Godin’s The Dip | Faceless Trader

[...] They Don’t Teach You This In School - The Dip: Why You Have To Quit To Be The Best by Michael Moore [...]
Jturner

“The first thing Godin advises is that if you won’t become the best
at whatever you’re starting, there’s no point in trying to get past The
Dip and succeed. He says you should quit straight away and focus your
time and money on something that you can become the best at. Remember,
it makes sense to be the best, not just above average, because the rewards are unequally skewed”
I’m sorry, but this quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I certainly understand the concept of not ‘flogging a dead horse’ but I am wondering if Seth Godin ever heard of undertaking an activity for the sheer pleasure of it. I certainly hope his book was a New York Times best seller, otherwise that would have been a lot of time wasted. There is NOTHING i haven’t learned or experienced in my life that was a waste of time yet there is also NOTHING that I am the best at.
http://mmoorejones.com Michael Moore-Jones

I completely see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s quite his point. He’s not saying that if you undertake something it’s a waste of time – he’s simply saying that you’ll get MORE out of an activity that you can become the best at. It’s about the opportunity cost by undertaking something that you can’t become the best in. That’s my interpretation of it, anyways.
SZew

I agree that we put too much emphasis on never quitting anything when, in fact, we often should quit things so we can put our time and energy into things we’re better at. But — and perhaps I’m misinterpreting this — I don’t think so much emphasis should be placed on being the best.

I mean, most people in the world are never going to be the best at anything. So what’s this telling them? That they should roll over and die because it’s not worth doing anything at all because they’ll never be the best at anything at all?

Moreover, assuming that all of the others things out there are worth nothing if they’re not the best is a huge fallacy. Sure, vanilla ice cream sells exponentially more than any other flavor. But what kind of a boring world would it be if only vanilla ice cream existed? Yet if we all take this advice to heart, that’s exactly what will happen — no one can beat vanilla, so everyone will stop trying, and that’ll be a sad day.
Hollie

Quitting something in order to start something potentially better is very good advice, especially for people in their late teens/early twenties. This time of our lives is constantly changing; leaving high school, starting Uni all to do a seemingly worthless degree, then trying to find a “career” can be so stressful and daunting to many of us. However, being “the best” is not good advice. At all. We should put happiness (I know, it sounds cheesy) before success. It really doesn’t matter right now if you realise that philosophy major you did is seemingly worthless, or you jump from supermarket jobs to fast food chain jobs, back to supermarket jobs again and again. It is called life experience; we need to try many different things in order to know what we want to do and be. If you don’t like your job, your degree, or your life in general – change! Just try your hardest at being happy. Remember; being “the best” does not mean being the “happiest”.

TDTYTIS is an ever-growing library of life lessons and advice.

As each generation grows up, individuals will make mistakes and learn a huge amount. But they don't stop to pass the lessons that they've learned onto younger generations. Therefore, each generation grows up making the same mistakes and using up time that they could be using creatively.

The videos and articles here on TDTYTIS will allow you to learn from the combined knowledge and experience of other generations, so that you can be more effective in whatever you do in life.