May 2nd, 2007
How do You Know When to Quit and When Not to Quit?
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I have written about Seth Godin’s soon-to-be-released book ‘The Dip’ before and I have also been following The Dip Blog with utmost fascination. Here are some of my favorite pieces from The Dip Blog -
Seven reasons you might fail to become the best in the world -
- You run out of time (and quit).
- You run out of money (and quit).
- You get scared (and quit).
- You’re not serious about it (and quit).
- You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit).
- You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard).
- You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don’t have the talent).Even worse than quitting in the first six cases: not quitting. Settling. Sticking with it but not succeeding.
On hyper-competition -
The long term hasn’t gone away. Not at all. Winning in the long run is far more important. At the same time, it’s essential to note that many markets have set up short-term screens that make it impossible to survive in the long run if you’re not seen as a possible market leader (the best in the world) early on.
On the real 80/20 rule -
Most organizations (and most people) settle for 20%, hit the Dip and move on to the next thing. A few people insist on devoting an unreasonable amount of effort into something. They cross the Dip and get rewarded handsomely for it.
On being reasonable -
Your competition beats you when they do things that are unreasonable. In large markets, the unreasonable competitor always establishes the new benchmark, always ends up as best in the world, always redefines what ‘within reason’ means.
On pop music -
The Dip is what separates a hit from a non-hit. And the irony is that without the Dip, it would be useless to try to succeed in pop music. Without a chasm that separates the hits from everyone else, the hits aren’t worth anything.
On the winner-takes-it-all nature of our world -
Many systems only work when there are a lot of entries but just a few winners. It’s the effort and expense of the non-winners that supports the benefits of the winners. Digg wouldn’t work if there were only a few stories a day submitted. It’s the stories that don’t make the front page that make the front page winners succeed.
The only question left to be answered now is:
How do you know when to quit and when not to quit?
