Weekend Reading

Spent a couple of hours reading a quick and provocative book by Seth Godin -
The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
Godin's premise is simple yet hard to know if it applies to you: successful people escape from dead ends quickly while staying focused and motivated when faced with temporary set-backs. What makes this even more interesting, is that Godin argues that worthwhile tasks always have what he calls the dip - a low point where progress is no longer being made, and fun is hard to find. In fact the worse the dip, the more one is forced to produce exceptional work to just survive. Once through a severe dip, a person or company emerges stronger and often with a lot less competition (many others quit in the dip and end up as losers). The hard part, and it is not so clear from Godin's book, is to determine whether you are really in a severe dip or a well defined rut that you are afraid to get out of. To help sort this out, Godin distinguishes between quitting a tactic and quitting a strategy. To be successful, one must quit many tactics while remaining focused on a strong (and ultimately successful) strategy. Finally, he gives three questions to ask prior to quitting: 1) Am I panicking?; 2) Who am I trying to influence? and 3)What sort of measurable progress am I making?

This book, like Godin's others is definitely thought provoking, especially for entrepreneurs gutting their way through tough times. This will become a new reference in my business library.