You Should Read The Dip By Seth Godin

Reading “The Dip” written by Seth Godin has been a wonderful learning experience. Learning doesn’t always have to be done in a physical classroom and getting a certification just to prove that you are mediocre in a specific topic. This book provides some guidelines and tells why being the best matters and how to tell it’s time you should quit (without guilt).

Just to mention a few of what I’ve found interesting in the book:

The way you become the best in the world is by quitting the stuff where you can’t be the best. That leaves you the resources to invest in getting through the dip. It’s that simple.

I think my father told me this before. Be the best in what you do. He actually invented a proverb of his own which goes something like “What’s the use of having ten knives when none of them is sharp?” It’s pure logic. You won’t tell Michael Jordan to play tennis, ask Warren Buffet to be a stock broker and Bill Gates to be a KDE or Gnome developer.

Quit the dead ends and invest in the dips.
– Blog every day for three years until your blog is #1 in its ield.
– Give up your social life for a year until you make editor of the law review.
– Last six seconds longer on every single exercise in the gym until your abs actually start to grow.

Can you do everything? Of course not. Breadth isn’t the point. The point is that in a world of ininite choice, in a world where the best in the world is worth more every single day, the only chance you’ve got is to find a dip and embrace it. Realize that it’s actually your best ally. The harder it is to get through, the better your chance of being the only one to get through it.

Plan, Set a timeline, focus, evaluate, test, refocus and stick with it. Saying is easy, but it all comes down to actions in the end.

Sticking with something just so you can be mediocre at it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Being average is for losers.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact, winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can become number one in your niche, you’ll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and long-term security.

Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip—they get to the moment of truth and then give up—or they never even find the right Dip to conquer.

The fact is, winners lose a lot too. Those who are winning now had often been setback by numerous losses before they actually got to the point of winning. In order to reach their goals, we must travel light, move fast, learn fast, lose and keep on trying.

Last of all, have faith in seeking out your dip!