Summary of the Dip – Seth Godin

Summary of the Dip – Seth Godin

Every new project starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point – really hard, really not fun. At this point you might be in a Dip, which will get better if you keep pushing, or a cul-de-sac, which will never get better no matter how hard you try. The hard part is knowing the difference and acting on it.

Most people quit. They just don’t quit successfully. In fact, many professions and many marketplaces profit from quitters. The truth is winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time. 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 minority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new. Either way, it’s about being the best in the world. It’s about getting through the hard stuff and coming out the other side.

According to Seth Godin, what sets successful entrepreneurs apart from everyone else is their ability to give up on cul-de-sacs while staying motivated in dips. Quitting when you hit a dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started is worth doing, then quitting when you hit the dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. Scarcity, as we’ve seen, is the secret to value. If there wasn’t a dip, there’d be no scarcity.

Seth gives good advice in this book about when you should give up and when you should persevere through a Dip. Here is a short quote:

Successful people don’t just ride out the Dip. They don’t just buckle down and survive it. No, they lean into the Dip. They push harder, changing the rules as they go.

Many times we quit something for the wrong reasons. We tend to take the easy way out without giving it our all; sometimes perseverance is more rewarding than giving up. Every now and then we will hit a Dip but we need to figure out if it’s a Dip or a cul-de-sac. Seth Godin says that when you find yourself in a cul-de-sac we need to quit now rather than later. Take that focus and use it to make something remarkable. The pain of quitting just gets bigger and bigger over time. Seth calls this a cliff – it’s a situation where you can’t quit until you fall off, and the whole thing falls apart. What we need to remember is that a Dip creates scarcity and scarcity creates value.

A few people will choose to do the brave thing and end up the best in the world. Informed people will probably choose to do the mature thing and save their resources for a project they’re truly passionate about. The truth is that people who set out to make it through the Dip, those who choose to invest the time and the energy and the effort to power through the Dip, those are the ones who become the best in the world. In essence what we need to do is:

Quit the wrong stuff

Stick with the right stuff

Have the guts to do one or the other

If you are still not sure whether or not to give up or stick with your idea, then I recommend you get this book, it will give you great insight and perhaps help you make a decision.