The start of 2015 I meet one of my best friends in my favorite coffee shop in Riyadh. He start with a question Ali did you get out from your dip?
To be honest I did not understand his Question. He challenge me to read a book called The Dip to understand his Question. I Purchase the book from audible.com. After I finished from the book, I called him back and I answered the Question: Yes I did get out from the Dip
Warning
You may resign from your current Job after finishing
Winners Quit More Often than Losers Do
No matter what your gym teacher told you, quitting is often the very best option available to you. Imagine if you’d never quit your first job? Where would you be now?
What if you’re 5’9”, like me, and never quit trying to play professional basketball? How much time, energy and resources would you continue to waste trying to pursue a goal that is likely unattainable?
“Winners never quit” is terrible advice. Instead, “winners never quit with a short term focus”. Winners definitely quit from dead end paths; when “big picture planning” helps them realize that the end payoff doesn’t outweigh the work required to cross the dip. Winners quit losing propositions in order to focus all resources on winning ones. In one of his more vivid analogies, Godin compares an unfocused person to a woodpecker:
“A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”
Think “Big Picture”
To borrow from Stephen Covey, “Start with the end in mind”. What is your world going to look like when this goal/project/initiative is complete? How will it impact your life? What are the long term benefits? Be specific and visualize them; write them down if it helps. The truth of the matter is that most people quit a pursuit in a moment of short term weakness, based on emotional decision making. If your resolution is to hit the gym at 6am, chances are that if you’re going to bail on the goal, it will be at 5:45am. Emotional decision – “I’m tired”.
“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.”
While this is good advice to help with not quitting, it also works in the reverse as well. As mentioned, sometimes quitting is the best choice; completely necessary to allow you to move to the next level. If you find yourself stagnating in a certain role, procrastinating from quitting when you know you should, perhaps you need to revisit the long term benefits of staying versus moving on.
Build and maintain clearly defined objectives and purpose, and you will find it a lot easier to make a decision based on long term benefit, rather than short term pain.
Or, after seeing it through the lenses of logic, you may choose to quit a particular resolution before you even get started.
Be Prepared.
Fact: You are going to hit a Dip. With the exception of being showcased on Oprah or fluking into fame and fortune, any path you take (worth pursuing) will have a Dip. Really let that sink in. If you truly acknowledge the fact that you will have challenging times in your venture on the road ahead, will that effect your decision to pursue it? Will you be willing to put in the effort to make it through the Dip? Is the reward on the other side big enough to justify the effort?
“If you can’t make it through the dip, don’t start.”
The Dip,
Use your understanding of “The Dip” to focus your energy and attention on projects you’re actually serious about. Quit everything that you’re not.
Within the seventy-eight pages of The Dip, Seth Godin elaborates on these concepts and many others, making it a great, quick read early in the New Year, or before considering any major new venture.
