|
|
The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
Authors :
Seth Godin
| Release Date: |
10 May, 2007 |
| Manufacturer: |
Portfolio Hardcover |
| Availability: |
Usually ships in 24 hours |
| List Price: |
$12.95 |
|
|
|
|
|
 Customer Reviews 
Brilliant, but chaotic
Rating: 3
I love that "The Dip" is such a short book, weighing in at around 100 pages with little text on each page. The author manages well to get his point across, and the ideas presented in the book are very sticky. The ideas in the book are bound to stay with you for a long time.
The book would have benefited from some structure though. The short sections are not intertwined in any obvious way; the book is more like a random patchwork of the same concept illuminated from different angles.
Good, but not worth your money
Rating: 2
I have to give it to Seth Godin for being an engaging writer. He knows how to write and keep your interest high. It's a very thin book however--I finished the book before realizing I had been planning to scan it to decide whether to buy the book or not.
The book itself can be summarized into a few points:
(1) The world is disproportionately nicer to #1 (the very best gets a lot, lot more than the rest), therefore
(2) If you're serious at something you should try your best to be #1, but
(3) In your journey, there will be a Dip along the way. This Dip separates the quitters from the winners. It's the stage along a curve where the initial rapid progress that you have seems to suddenly plateau or even regress. By realizing this, you can
(4) either persist to overcome The Dip, or quit if you think it's not worth it/you can't be at the top. If you can't be #1, might as well quit and look for something for which you have a talent. Also, it's possible that
(5) it may not be The Dip at all but a Dead End, in which no matter how hard you try it's still, er, a Dead End. In which case you should get the heck outta there as fast as possible.
Now the problem with this book, is that it doesn't really give you a framework to decide whether you should quit or stick. And whether you should quit because it's a Dead-End or because it's a Dip but you know it's not worth it.
To be fair to the author, usually we only realize this kind of thing after the fact. Not to mention it's really subjective (you may want to persevere even if you have no world-class talent simply because you like it, for instance). So the book gets 2 stars from me.
Are You In A Dip Or A Cul-De-Sac?
Rating: 3
It's an important question, and one that this short, easy-to-read book from Seth Godin will certainly get you thinking about.
Sadly Godin doesn't really give us the clues, the tips or the techniques for determining which is which - and getting it wrong could be a disastrous strategy. I was left feeling vaguely dissatisfied - like there was something I was missing, or maybe a follow-up book that I needed to wait for.
Perhaps that was deliberate - a part-answered question is a good way to get us talking after all, a remarkable 'purple cow' kind of strategy that Godin recommends.
In any event I do feel more aware of the question after reading the book, and find myself testing different situations to try and assess if they're 'dips' or 'cul-de-sacs'.
I'd say that was benefit enough to spend the time reading this short book.
|
|
|
