The Dip: How to Know When to Quit

Winners never quit, right?

Well, no. It’s a bit more complicated than that, at least according to Seth Godin.

In The Dip, Godin points out that winners actually quit all the time — they’re just careful to quit the right things. With all of that extra nonsense now out of the way, they can put their full efforts toward the most important things they’re doing, and they suddenly find themselves swimming in accolades and making statues of themselves out of liquified Bentley parts.

Now, it’s not always easy to quit. Accepting defeat feels bad. Guilt, stubbornness, or accidentally letting our identity get wrapped up in a project can all keep us going when we know we shouldn’t be.

Godin tries to make things a little easier by introducing three graphs to represent how a project might go for us. Two of them are bad for our time, energy, and self-esteem. But the dip is the way forward.

Once we find the right dip and push through it, we can turn things around for the better.

As for those other things, it’s time to quit.

Things mentioned in this episode:

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Timestamps:

0:00:46 – Quitting and being the best in the world
0:17:48 – False assumptions and changing your strategy
0:23:49 – Competition and pushing through the dip
0:32:13 – Setting feasible goals
0:35:12 – The cliff and the cul-de-sac
0:46:01 – Questions to ask yourself before quitting
0:50:09 – Knowing what to invest in
0:53:25 – Thoughts on being well-rounded
0:55:33 – Recap and conclusion

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