New Read: The Dip

Started this week what I hope to be the beginning of a pre-Catalyst reading track. I picked up The Dip by Seth Godin, one of the Catalyst main stage speakers this year. My aim is to know more about the session speakers before I get to the conference this year, rather than simply showing up and coming away with a few favorites (whom I may/may not get around to reading after the fact).

Godin is a bestselling author (Purple Cow, Small is the New Big, among others), the founder and CEO of Squidoo and one of the most popular business bloggers in the world. The Dip bills itself as “A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).” Little it is: roughly 75 pages long (I read a third this morning). The book is also written without a table of contents and without any real designation of chapters. I had to find a small shift in thought to pick where to stop this morning.

Little in this case doesn’t necessarily mean low value. The beauty of having a smaller book like this is that the author is able to get to the meat faster. There’s no fluff. The added beauty of The Dip is that the concept for the book is simple as well, so you get to the heart of the matter on the main point quickly.

Here’s a small excerpt to whet your appetite. More to follow once I’m done (which will be this weekend sometime):

From a test-taking book: “Skim through the questions and answer the easiest ones first skipping ones you don’t know immediately.” Bad advice. Superstars can’t skip the ones they don’t know. In fact, people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know. The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand. ...

Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations. Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those that strive (and fail) to get what they want. And most people do just that. They quit when it’s painful and stick when they can’t be bothered to quit.

Posted 07.19.2008

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