Part 1: Get On "The Dip"

Seth Godin describes the Dip in his book appropriately named “The Dip.” The premise is the following, you should quit working at all things that you have no intention of getting better at, which releases you to engage that which you're passionate about and put in the effort to become good enough to get out of the dip (Note: any discipline, which has a group of people who are labeled "the best" and other groups of people who aren't, has a dip). The dip is where the uncommitted quit. What’s neat is that if you already know you’re not willing to go through the dip, you need not put yourself through the trials and tribulations associated with traversing the dip.

The dip is anything that makes becoming the best difficult. The dip could be fear, hard problems or processes, a difficult technique, etc. Remain cognizant that a difficulty can be physical, intellectual or emotional. The litmus test you can perform for determining whether you’re in the dip or not is asking yourself “would it be easier to quit than to continue on getting better?” If you think about it, the answer to the question most of the time is a resounding “YES!” The frequency of this question/response says that we spend most (if not all) of our time at some point in the dip, in part because most of us are not even focused on getting better—a stark difference between the average majority and the great few. For the great, their response to the litmus test is the same as everybody else's--but only at a superficial level. For those considered "the best," the pain of quitting that which they are passionate about is FAR greater than the pain they'll endure continuing to move along and up their respective dips.

Hence, for that which you want to become great at, pursue it to the end, and quit (trying to get better at) the rest (for the rest, good enough is good enough).

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