The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) (Hardcover)

by Seth Godin (Author) "Almost every day, in fact..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Yet another easily digestible social marketplace commentary from the blogger/author who penned Purple Cow and Small is the New Big, Godin prescribes a cleverly counter-intuitive way to approach one's potential for success. Smart, honest, and refreshingly free of self-help posturing, this primer on winning-through-quitting is at once motivational and comically indifferent, making the lofty goal of "becoming the best in the world" an achievable proposition-all you need is to "start doing some quitting." The secret to "strategic quitting" is seeking, understanding and embracing "the Dip," "the long slog between starting and mastery" in which those without the determination or will find themselves burning out. As such, Godin demonstrates how to identify and quit your "Cul-de-Sac" and "Cliff" situations, in which no amount of work will lead to success. Godin provides tips for finding your Dip, taking advantage of it and becoming one of the few (inevitably valuable) players to emerge on the other side; he also provides guidelines for quitting with confidence. Quick, hilarious and happily irreverent, Godin's truth-that "we fail when we get distracted by tasks we don't have the guts to quit"-makes excellent sense of an often-difficult career move.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
The old saying is wrong-winners do quit, and quitters do win.

Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point-really hard, and not much fun at all.

And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you're in a Dip-a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.

According to bestselling author Seth Godin, what really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.

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.

Whether you're a graphic designer, a sales rep, an athlete, or an aspiring 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. If you are, The Dip will inspire you to hang tough. If not, it will help you find the courage to quit-so you can be number one at something else.

Seth Godin doesn't claim to have all the answers. But he will teach you how to ask the right questions.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (May 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591841666
• ISBN-13: 978-1591841661
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (149 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,663 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

241 of 271 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Perfect Book (for the person who needs to be told the obvious), May 22, 2007

By	Robert Schmidt (Honolulu, HI & Logan, UT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Dip, by Seth Godin, is a very small book (80 pages) that says, in short:


- Winners quit (regroup. cut their losses, switch gears) whenever necessary on the path to winning.

- Be the best, and the world comes knocking at your door.

- Work through the pain, because the reward is waiting for you further down the road.


If any of these comments/suggestions seem unclear, take at look at The Dip.

If you understand already, you've just saved $12.95.


This is not a "how-to" book. It is meant to be a motivational piece of writing. Work hard... the financial rewards are greatest for the hardest worker. Work through "the dip," or that period where the gains don't seem to be coming as quickly as you'd like. Don't stop running the marathon at mile 25.

Look, the very successful don't read these books. The barely successful can't read these books. So it is written for the somewhat successful, or the person who is looking for "something" else. Here's the shortened version: "Work and study hard. Don't give up. Persevere. However, consider alternatives. Share this book with others."

Don't get me wrong... this is not, in any sense, a bad book, or a book giving bad advice. To me, the advice seems pretty obvious.

Work hard, play hard, and be well.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Trite, June 19, 2007

By	Christian D. Nunciato "cnunciato" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I ran across this very thin little tome while wandering through a local bookstore and thought it looked just interesting enough to give a second look. Ostensibly about quitting (which I'd done recently, and was still quite excited about), it had also been marked down 20%, so I thought what the heck, and picked it up.

Even as thin as it is, though, and as small, and with an additional 20% off the cover price, it managed, somehow, to end up a complete waste of time. While I agree with its main tenet -- there are actually two of them: "Quitting Is Okay, So Long As You Know When to Do It" (the main one) and "Be the Best in the World" (another one that gets somehow diluted for all the talking of dips, cul-de-sacs, and so on) -- I was hoping for a somewhat deeper explanation than what I ended up getting.

Godin's thesis can be summed up almost completely in four short sentences: "There's good pain, then there's bad pain. Running is good pain (it's valuable); chewing brokwn glass is bad pain (it's worthless). If your job is good pain, you should stay. If it's bad pain, you should quit." And that's it -- that's prety much all there is to it.

I think what Godin's trying to do here is create a new personal business philosophy meme, but it just doesn't work -- it's way too trite. There are a couple of paragraphs on opportunity cost that I found somewhat valuable, but otherwise, I'd suggest skipping it. And it's a shame, too, because I happen to believe pretty passionately in a number of concepts that it advocates -- it's just that Godin doesn't give any of them any more than the gloss-over treatment. Pass on it.

65 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read The Dip. Then wait a few days and read it again. , May 16, 2007

By	David M. Scott "David Meerman Scott" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Seth Godin has an uncanny ability of delivering the right information at the right time on his blog, in his books, and live.

In the late 1990s as I was struggling to understand the impact of Web marketing, he published his classic Permission Marketing. I immediately applied those ideas in my role as VP marketing at a reasonably large NASDAQ traded technology company.

Soon after, as the Internet bubble was wearing thin and I was in a professional dip, Seth published a remarkable little essay on his blog about the benefits of quitting your job. That was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment and before long I was a scared entrepreneur starting up my own business. The first few years were great: I was building something and it was refreshing not to have to run ideas through the corporate machine. I made the decisions. But soon the little things started to bug me: buying the printer paper and dealing with mundane nonsense like Web hosting and booking airplane trips. I wasn't as engaged as when I started and business wasn't as good. I had hit another dip. But it was a different kind of dip than the one where I quit my job. This was not a dip that required quitting. Fortunately I powered through that second dip.

In a smart and small package, Godin's The Dip lays out everything you need to understand about dips: How to identify the times that it's best to quit and move on and the ways to recognize when, if you just stick it out, you can become the best in the world.

Powerful stuff. But Godin's work always is.

Read The Dip. Then wait a few days and read it again. You'll appreciate the words of wisdom even more the second time.