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

Seth Godin

May 2007 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

 A New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller

In this iconic bestseller, popular business blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin proves that winners are really just the best quitters. Godin shows that winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip.

Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out fun…then gets really hard, and not much fun at all. You might be in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac—a total dead end. What really sets superstars apart is the ability to tell the two apart.

Winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can beat the Dip to be the best, you’ll earn profits, glory, and long-term security.
Whether you’re an intern or a 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. The old saying is wrong—winners do quit, and quitters do win.

Ratings and reviews

An excellent book. I have re-read this book more than 3 times at least, whenever I needed to reflect and decide on important decisions in my life. I think it's a good book to remind yourself of what's important and what you want to pursue given your limited time and interest. Also it makes you reflect on your reason to continue or start a journey, and gives you determination to continue it.

Excellent. Short. Useful. The biggest learning is about quitting; not so much about staying through the dip. Kind of an inverted way to look at the traditional American values associated with success. I wish that most books in this genre were this pithy. Instead they are like most business meetings: fifteen minutes of information crammed into two hours. Godin seems to be the only author brave enough to not inflate his core idea into a standard length book; instead he writes a succinct book around a central premise without all the repetition. He is an exceptional writer.

I followed this book's advice and stopped reading it partway through, so I got that much value out of it. The content would have made a good essay for Rework, but there's not enough here for a full book. Basically it says that the rewards for being "the best" in some context are high enough that they justify the extra work required to achieve that status, and you should stop doing things that won't help you be "the best". Pretty good advice for a business, but also rather obvious. Not so great advice for leading an interesting and fulfilling life.

About the author

Seth Godin is the author of more than a dozen bestsellers that have changed the way people think about marketing, leadership, and change, including Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Small is the New Big, The Dip, Tribes, Linchpin, and Poke the Box. He is also the founder and CEO of Squidoo.com and a very popular lecturer. He writes one of the most influential business blogs in the world at sethgodin.com.