<ul><li>A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy (The Cul-de-sac). Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.(The dip)</li><li>Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea.</li><li>Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.</li><li>If you want to be a superstar, then you need to find a field with a steep Dip—a barrier between those who try and those who succeed.</li></ul>

The Cul-de-sac Vs The Dip

<ul><li>Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.</li><li>Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.</li><li>Instead, they quit in their quest to be the best in the world because the cost just seemed too high.</li><li>Quitting is often a great strategy, a smart way to manage your life and your career.</li></ul>

Quit

<ol><li>You run out of time (and quit).</li><li>You run out of money (and quit).</li><li>You get scared (and quit).</li><li>You’re not serious about it (and quit).</li><li>You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit).</li><li>You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard).</li><li>You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don’t have the talent).</li></ol>

Seven Reasons You Might Fail to Become the Best in the World

<ul><li>The entire company is based on the idea of slogging through the Dip, relentlessly changing tactics but never quitting the big idea.</li><li>Procter & Gamble has killed hundreds of products. Starbucks killed their music-CD–burning stations. Social Security reform has been dropped a dozen times.</li><li>Selling is about a transference of emotion, not a presentation of facts.</li></ul>

Slog Through The Dip

<ul><li>The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.</li><li>It’s the incredibly difficult challenges (the Dips) that give you the opportunity to pull ahead.</li><li>In a competitive world, adversity is your ally. The harder it gets, the better chance you have of insulating yourself from the competition.</li></ul>

The Dip And Scarcity

<ul><li>Scarcity makes being at the top worth something.</li><li>The mass market is dying.</li><li>People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of.</li><li>They fail because they don’t know when to quit and when to refuse to settle.</li><li>Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.</li></ul>

Is That the Best You Can Do?

QUESTION 1: AM I PANICKING?QUESTION 2: WHO AM I TRYING TO INFLUENCE?QUESTION 3: WHAT SORT OF MEASURABLE PROGRESS AM I MAKING?<ul><li>If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.</li><li>If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.</li></ul>

Three Questions to Ask Before Quitting

<ul><li>Winners understand that taking that pain now prevents a lot more pain later.</li><li>You should quit if the project you’re working on has a Dip that isn’t worth the reward at the end.</li><li>Quitting Is Not the Same as Failing.</li><li>The real success goes to those who obsess.</li></ul>

Take The Pain Now

<ul><li>The opposite of quitting is rededication.</li><li>The opposite of quitting is an invigorated new strategy designed to break the problem apart.</li><li>Short-term pain has more impact on most people than long-term benefits do, which is why it’s so important for you to amplify the long-term benefits of not quitting.</li></ul>

The Opposite of Quitting Isn’t “Waiting Around”

“Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.”

<ul><li>To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional.</li><li>In your search for a quick fix, you almost certainly waste time and you definitely waste energy jumping back and forth. </li><li>The problem is that only a tiny portion of the audience is looking for the brand-new thing. Most people are waiting for the tested, the authenticated, and the proven.</li></ul>

Say No To Quick Fixes

<ul><li>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.</li><li>The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery.</li><li>Refer figure.</li></ul>

THE DIP 

Feeling stuck in life? How to actually move forward

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Ways to Move Forward When You're Feeling Stuck

Winners are really just the best quitters. Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt--until they commit to beating the right Dip.

A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller In this iconic bestseller, popular business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin proves that winners are really just the best quitters. Godin shows that winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip. Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun…then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac—a total dead end. What really sets superstars apart is the ability to tell the two apart. Winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can beat the Dip to be the best, you’ll earn profits, glory, and long-term security. Whether you’re an intern or a CEO, this fun little book will help you figure out if you’re in a Dip that’s worthy of your time, effort, and talents. The old saying is wrong—winners do quit, and quitters do win.

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A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller In this iconic bestseller, popular business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin proves that winners are really just the best quitters. Godin shows that winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip. Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun…then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac—a total dead end. What really sets superstars apart is the ability to tell the two apart. Winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can beat the Dip to be the best, you’ll earn profits, glory, and long-term security. Whether you’re an intern or a CEO, this fun little book will help you figure out if you’re in a Dip that’s worthy of your time, effort, and talents. The old saying is wrong—winners do quit, and quitters do win.

Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change.Godin is author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world, and he is also a renowned speaker. He was recently chosen as one of 21 Speakers for the Next Century by Successful Meetings and is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences he addresses.Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry's leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998.He holds an MBA from Stanford, and was called "the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age" by Business Week.

SETH GODIN

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