The Dip: The Extraordinary Benefits of Knowing When to Quit (and When to Stick)

Book notes, thoughts, and reactions
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by Harshvardhan J. Pandit
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These are my book notes for "The Dip: The Extraordinary Benefits of Knowing When to Quit (and When to Stick)" by Seth Godin.

The book starts with a quote on a page: "Being the best in the world is seriously underrated". Much of the (very short 55 page) book is based on an understanding of whether the current job is the way to become the best and if not then whether it is time to quit. What best means if left up to the reader to decide and apply for themselves.

"I feel like giving up" - but give up what exactly? Why do we feel like we want to give up everything instead of something effective if we want to make a change? If we are stressed and frustrated, we tend to want a clean break. Perhap because we don't know how to make it stop. So we want to give everything. That's quitting. And a lot of myth and bad advice that says to push ahead no matter what and that it will get better. Well, its not likely to get better on its own. You need to make some changes if your choices landed you here. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.

So why doesn't this work out for people? Most people quit -- They just don't quit successfully. What is the right stuff? How to recognise it? What is the right time? How to recognise it? What is quitting successfully? Since the book and my reading is about work, this is about work stuff. So the right stuff is the part of the work that is not aligned with my interests, that is not what I want to do, that is what is giving me anxiety, stress, and frustration. However, it is imperative to distinguish the main cause from the other side effects. That's the right stuff. The right time therefore should mean either I have an alternative opportunity somewhere else that allows me to do this stuff the right way, or the cost of continuing is so hight that staying is going to make the situation significantly worse. That's the right time to quit.

You don't have to be lucky. You have to be smart, focused, and incredibly hardworking. So what is smart? What is focused? And what is hardworking? Smart means to be informed, to be aware, and to have the capacity to reason into the most appropriate decision. Focused means having the ability to identify what needs to be prioritised and doing that at cost of not getting into other things. Hardworking means putting in the time and the work where and when it is needed. What's not mentioned is discipline and grit -- which are the real strategies to get through stuff.

Before we start to quit, we might want to think about why being the best in the world matters so much. Here, does best refer to the absolutely best person in the world as in objectively or does it refer to being the best person you can be subjectively? Either way, one or both of them should provide strong motivations to want to improve, and to recognise the current situation is not working out, and that to be the best, you have to change, and to change you have to quit. Best is subjective. I get to decide, not you. The world is selfish, and its my definition that matters based on my convenience and preferences. So if you have decided on being the best, but you are frustrated in your current path to get there, it is time to quit.

If you're not going to put in the effort to be the best, why bother? But then why do we want to be the best? Not everyone wants to be the best. Some people just want to get by. Some believe they cannot be the best. In a free market, we reward the exceptional -- so if you are not the best, and you are not becoming the best, you are not valued and that value is not recognised. That's why being the best is important. The people who are the best in the world specialise at getting really good at the questions they don't know. So all the hardships and the difficulties that come from the unknown, which stop you from quitting, and the ones that the smart and the best one embrace and take it on as a challenge. There is no easy path out.

Strategic quitting is the way to successfully quit. Reactive quitting and serial quitting are ways to fail to get what we want. Most people quit when its painful and stick when they can't be bothered to quit. Strategic quitting is being strategic about quitting. It involves being smart about where you are, what is your trajectory, and assessing whether this is the correct time to quit. Its the way to quit smartly. Reactive quit by comparison is when we quit as soon as we start facing difficulties. We don't wait around to see if this is the right time to quit, we're merely reacting to the situation. Serial quitting is when we keep doing this over and over again. We start, we run into difficulties, we quit.

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. It is when we overcome the difficult parts not because the difficult parts went away or because we stopped doing them, but because we figured out a way to deal with them and got good at it. So now the effort required to deal with them is not the same as before. Now we are free to pursue mastery and get where we want to go -- towards becoming the best. That's the dip, because its like a valley before the next hardships start again.

Successful people don't just ride out the dip -- they lean into it and push harder and change the rules as they go along. Dips are the easy middle parts, the soft and comfy cushion. If you stop here, you are stuck here. You must know that this is a signal that you have to push harder so that you continue towards the goal. Otherwise if you mistake a dip for comfort, then you won't be the best.

The cul-de-sac or dead-end is when we continue pushing and nothing changes or barely changes. This means we need to know where we are at the moment, and where we are going. If we're in a dip, we must know that pushing ahead is going to give us the results. Otherwise its a waste of time and we're just going towards a dead-end. That's why they call those jobs as dead-end jobs. So what's the method to successfully quit? Figure out if you're in a dip -- push hard ahead; or a dead-end -- then quit.

When it comes right down to it, its easy to not push hard ahead, to be comfortable where you are, and to aim for short term comfort over long term planning. What's the point of sticking to this and slogging ahead if you're not going to become the best? The brave thing to do is to push ahead and get to the other side with success. The mature thing to do is to realise when it isn't going to work and to not even start. The stupid thing to do is to start it, see that it is not going anywhere, and stick to it. The fact that it's difficult and unpredictable works to your advantage. Because if it were any other way, there'd be no joy in succeeding in it. The real success goes to those who obsess. It is easier to be mediocre than it is to confront reality and quit. Quitting is difficult, it requires you to acknowledge you will never be the best. So it's easier to continue in delusion than to make the hard decisions and to follow through.

Quitting when you're in the dip and when you could push ahead and get rewarded is a mistake. If the work was worth starting, then quitting in the dip means you just wasted all that time and effort. Do this often, and you'll become a serial quitter. Think you're in the dip when you're not, and become a reactive quitter. Get smarter and realise whether you're in the dip or in the dead-end, and you're on the way to be a strategic quitter. Combined with 4000 works (another book), this means don't start things you wouldn't commit to working through the dip for. So you not only need to identify and push through the dips, but you should also identify and quit all the dead-ends and give your full focus to the things that will give you success. You must quit projects and investments that don't give you the opportunity to be the best. It's difficult but it is vitally important.

Its not wonder we quit. The system wants us to. So the easiest way and yet the most difficult to actually realise is to change who gets to define the metrics for success. Make your own. Quit and change stuff and screw the system. There's nothing wrong with optimism. The pain and the waste comes with it when we make hard choices. So if we make them when we're in the dip, they will have been worth it. Otherwise we have suffered for no good reason and no progress.

Quitting at the right time is difficult. Most of us don't have the guts to quit. Worse, sometimes when faced with difficulties, we don't figure out if its a dip or a dead-end -- we just get mediocre. So the most common response to being in the dip is to play it safe. Get comfortable. Don't work harder to figure out if its a dip or a dead-end. To do ordinary work, to suck it up, to average our way ahead. So the next time you feel like quitting and you know you're just being average - there are really only two choices. Quit. Or, be exceptional. Being average is also quitting, just not through a conscious and concrete decision. Its the slow rot where you whittle away. Being exceptional is instead the forceful hits that eventually fells even the largest of trees. If you're not able to get through the dip in an exceptional way, you must quit.

The opposite of quitting isn't waiting around. It is rededication. To get motivated and to devise a new strategy that gets you the results and gets rid of the problem. The smart people are realistic about when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and only being persistent when they know its there. Every day you stay in a dead-end or without knowing you're in one is a bad strategic decision for your career because every day you're lagging behind and there are others who are pushing on ahead. Winners understand that taking the pain in the short-term prevents a lot more pain later.

Quitting is not giving up the long-term goal, but quitting the tactics which aren't getting you there. You might rationalise your situation by thinking you're not in a dead-end and there's just the chance that things will get better. And so you start defending the mediocre work you and your surroundings are doing because its the best that can be done under the circumstances. Quitting isn't fun. It isn't easy. So you don't. But you should quit when its the correct time, no matter how hard it feels in the short-term, so that you get to be the best in the long term. Or, you will have to settle for being average.

The time to look for a new job is when you don't need one. Before it feels comfortable. Challenge yourself. Strategic quitting is when you are aware of it being the right decision, when you get more opportunities and are becoming the best. Its a conscious choice and an informed decision. If you're at a dead-end compared to what time and energy you are investing, its time to quit. Failing happens when you give up altogether, not just because you quit. Failing happens when you have no other options, when you use up all your time and resources. So staying when you should quit will eventually get you to the failing point. So people cope and try to muddle through instead of quitting -- and the problem with coping is that it never leads to exceptional performance. Quitting is better than coping because it frees you to excel at something else or somewhere else.

Quitting with a short term view is a bad decision. Quit with a long term strategy. If pride is the only thing keeping you from quitting, if there is no Dip to get through, then you are wasting an enormous amount of time and money defending something that is just painful in the short term but has huge benefits if you went through it. Quitting can be worth it if you want to become the best. There are three questions to ask first:

  1. Am I panicking? Quitting is not paicking, and you should not quit when panicking. Quitting should be a cold, calculated, informed choice.
  2. Who am I trying to influence? What am I trying to achieve? Are you quitting because this is the correct decision for you? Have you considered the consequences of that? Will it help you to quit -- are you aware of how and how much?
  3. What sort of measurable progress am I making? To succeed you must make progress, no matter how small, so that you are progressing and you know it. Otherwise if you stay and are not making any progress, then its a dead-end situation. Measurable progress doesn't have to be a raise or a promotion. It can be smaller than that -- so you have to create new milestones that allow you to track your progress and get you over the dip.

If you continue to be mediocre, average, unexceptional -- it won't happen that suddenly someone admires your persistence and you are successful. So write down under what situations and circumstances you are willing to quit and when. And then stick with it. Don't wait until it gets bad before deciding how to quit. If quitting is going to be a strategic decision, then you should outline the quitting strategy before it gets painful.

How dare you settle for mediocre just because you're busy coping with too many things on your agenda, racing against the clock to get it all done. The lesson is simple: if you've got as much as you've got, use it to become the best, to change the game, to set the agenda for yourself and everyone else. In order to get through the dip, you will need to quit everything else and use that void to do things that get you to being the best.

Personal Notes
Why do I care about my work -- about making a dent in the world, about ensuring the laws are followed and improved upon and that the changes we make are for the betterment of society? Why do I care about risk and impact assessments focused on society are done correctly and thoroughly? Somewhere underneath all the technical challenges and the engineering motivation there is something about doing the things that are right and that benefit the society. Why do I keep rejecting options where I make a product or a service and where I do my job 9am-5pm and don't care much about effects? So there must be a conscious awareness here where I discover my own inner workings, and if I am making decisions, then I do consciously and of my own device and out of free will and not coercion or compromise.

So what do I do with my own projects -- all of them? Do I abandon them? How do I avoid sunk cost fallacy e.g. for DPV? It is really something to abandon in entirely or to root it in capability and use that as a resource and focus on improving the parts of it that are relevant to what I really want to do e.g. a taxonomy of impacts and an information-oriented method to understand laws and documentation. I seem to be quite good at it, and I do want to be the best at it. But these are tools that will help me be the best at something else -- the assertion of facts and actually making an impactful change. So that's what I should focus on and quit everything else that doesn't get me to it.

What motivates me thus is the impact and the achievement of getting it done, and that's what has been pushing me to go for more stuff rather than being satisfied with myself and my surroundings which haven't given me these. For me, achievement is not linked to quantity of papers, or how much funding I bring in, or my rank or title in a bureaucratic hierarchy. If I achieve my goals, then I am successful, otherwise I am not, and there must be a change in either me, or my goals, or my environment -- or all of them. But there should be absolutely no compromise. No stuff like play the game and do less and be excellent in a marsh of mediocrity -- you're still just mediocre. No one became the best because they were busy figuring out and playing someone else's games. And thus, I should ignore the hesitation, believe in my own ambition, and make this leap of faith in my own capabilities.