I read The Dip by Seth Godin, which covers strategic quitting concept, 15 years ago!
It served me as a young professional then and has stayed with me ever since and served in areas like running and business.
The concept in 3 sentences
- Quitting as a short-term strategy is a bad idea. Quitting for the long term is an excellent idea because it frees you up to excel at something else.
- Taking short term pain (of quitting) now prevents a lot more pain later.
- The decision to quit or not is a simple evaluation: is the pain worth the benefit of the light at the end of the tunnel?
Quotes worth pondering from the book
- “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”
- “Extraordinary benefits await the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.”
- “Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.”
- “With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.”
- “Winners understand that taking that pain now prevents a lot more pain later.”
Like that? Here are some more with pondering
Side note: you are filling in your own blanks here on the parallel you can apply this toward.
I recently stopped all of my direct sales efforts because it is better for my mental health and overall time to opt out rather than going through the dip.
I’m not a MLM hater or anything and value the experience gained– it just isn’t a great fit for me anymore.
At the same time, I made the decision to change formats and go bo-weekly with the Run Lift Mom podcast. That’s an example of going through the dip- I believe the time sacrifice will be worth it.
Same issue- time- two different outcomes, promoted by this book’s rationale.
- “At the beginning, when you first start something, it’s fun. Over the next few days and weeks, the rapid learning you experience keeps you going. Whatever your new thing is, it’s easy to stay engaged in it. And then the Dip happens. The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.”
- “The Cul-de-Sac is boring, the Cliff is exciting (for a while), but neither gets you through the Dip and both lead to failure.”
- “In a competitive world, adversity is your ally. The harder it gets, the better chance you have of insulating yourself from the competition. If that adversity also causes you to quit, though, it’s all for nothing.”
- “It’s not enough to survive your way through this Dip. You get what you deserve when you embrace the Dip and treat it like the opportunity that it really is.”
- “Knowing that you’re facing a Dip is the first step in getting through it.”
- “Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little.”
- “If you can get through the Dip, if you can keep going when the system is expecting you to stop, you will achieve extraordinary results.”
- “To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.”
- “If you’re not able to get through the Dip in an exceptional way, you must quit. And quit right now.”
- “The decision to quit or not is a simple evaluation: Is the pain of the Dip worth the benefit of the light at the end of the tunnel?”
- “Strategic quitting is a conscious decision you make based on the choices that are available to you. If you realize you’re at a dead end compared with what you could be investing in, quitting is not only a reasonable choice, it’s a smart one.”
- “Quitting is better than coping because quitting frees you up to excel at something else.”
- “Actually, quitting as a short-term strategy is a bad idea. Quitting for the long term is an excellent idea.”
Get the Book
You can grab The Dip on Amazon in a variety of formats if you’ve never read it. If you have, I’d love to hear from you.
Go here to record an audio note (like a voicemail) tell me about a time you made a decision to push through or made a strategic quit. You may end up on a future podcast!
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