The Dip | Seth Godin

This episode of Books for Men features The Dip by Seth Godin. A big idea book that will teach you when to quit and when to stick (with something.) It's also my most recommended book of all time. Listen for more!

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So we are sticking with the trend and we are moving into a non-fiction book this week, and we're circling it back to a big idea book. So I haven't featured a big idea book since I did Skin in the Game by Taleb, and this one is a little bit different. It's a little bit smaller. It's a teeny-weeny book that's only 96 pages long, and I guess you can call it, it's by Seth Godin, and it's called The Dip. And so for those of you who don't know, Seth is an author. He's had a very, very popular blog, which he's written every day forever. It seems like he hasn't missed a day. It's kind of his shtick, right? He does the thing every single day.

(01:00)

He's someone who has been very, very influential in my development as a person. I've read a lot of Seth's work. He's written many, many books. But with that being said, this one is hands down my favorite. It's also probably the book that I have shared and recommended most to people over the years. So I've done a fair share of mentoring and just in general conversation as I've gone about my day and through my life, the number one book that I think I've recommended over the years has been The Dip. And before I get into the actual content of the book, I should mention that Seth's style is very, very brief, and it's very, very simple. It relies a lot on case studies and wit and logic, and that is something that he has a plethora of. So it is very, very entertaining. He writes in a very authoritative way, but not in a way that is offensive to the reader.

(02:00)

There's confidence in the way that he delivers his ideas, and it's not abrasive or aggressive at all. In fact, it's just super clear and super concise almost as if he's done all the heavy lifting to reduce these ideas down to what some people might even consider to be. Proverbs. In a way, it's almost like there are one-line quotes that just cut right through, and I will go through some of them shortly. First, let me tell you what it is, right? So the book in a nutshell presents this idea known as the dip, right? So what is the dip? It's basically the long slog between starting something and mastering something. And so when you begin anything in life, you start from the bottom, right? You start as a beginner and you're excited about it, and you should be because it's new and it's fun. But at some point, you get to the dip.

(03:00)

And the dip is that long hard grind of doing the thing over and over and over and over and over again, and everything in life that you're trying to achieve has a dip. And the higher the climb, the bigger the dip, and the more scarce that thing you're trying to achieve because the dip creates scarcity. The dip weeds people out. So what this book is really helping you with is when to quit something and when to stick. And you should probably be quitting a lot more than you think you should be because there's a dip associated with everything that we do in life, and that dip weighs on our emotions, on our time, and on our relationships. So if you're not picking the right dips to gut through, then you're going to be wasting, in theory, a lot of time in your life and you're going to be creating a lot of stress in your life.

(03:58)

And so what Seth presents in this book are a lot of little strategies and ways to think about approaching the dip, quitting certain things, sticking with other things, and why you should be doing all of this. Like he says in the book, “Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.” I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that winners never quit when in fact, winners, and I'm using air quotes now, quit all the time. They quit a million different things in order to find the one thing that they need to stick out. Over the years, there's been a popularization of the idea that, oh, you just got to grit it out. But I think in many situations, gritting it out is probably the worst thing that you could do because while you're busy gritting out that thing that doesn't make sense for you, your life or your goals, or your intentions, or it just doesn't work anymore, it's not worth the time you could be doing other things with that time.

(04:59)

You could be approaching another dip, right? The right dip and you could be trying to stick or grit out the right thing. Really working through that process of testing trial and quitting and figuring out what dip that you need to approach. I think that's one of the secrets. And that's why I've recommended this book so many times to so many different people over the years because I think it's so foundational and so fundamental for us as humans who want to achieve certain things in our life no matter what that thing actually is. The idea that's most important to remember here is that not all dips are created equal. So the bigger the dip, the bigger the reward, the smaller the dip, the lower the reward. Why? Because the bigger the dip, the longer the slog, the more scarcity there is at the top. So while this book is surely a book about quitting and teaching you when to quit, it's also a book about perseverance, right?

(05:59)

Or as Seth says in the book, “A woodpecker can tap 20 times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he could tap 20,000 times on one tree and get dinner.” So what's that mean to you as the reader? It means, well, you got to find the right tree. What tree should I be tapping 20,000 times? Right? And I think in this book, he does a good job laying out in a very short, concise set of words, why you should quit certain dips and why you should stick with other dips. One of my favorite quotes from the book that really hits on this idea is, “All coping does is waste your time and misdirect your energy. If the best you could do is cope, you're better off quitting.” Or there's the more direct simple, Seth-like quote, “Quit the wrong stuff, stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.”

(06:55)

And the last quote that I wrote down that I wanted to share with you before we wrap up is, “Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this being well-rounded is the secret to success.” And so I think that last quote can be misconstrued, but what Seth is really trying to say, and the reason why I like it so much is if you really want to be great at something, you've got to be obsessive about it and you've got to double down on it, and you've got to work really, really hard at it. And there's just nobody who I've ever read about or heard about that has had lasting success in anything that hasn't really, really persevered and put the time in to get really good at that thing.

(07:47)

Sure, they're shooting stars, there's luck, there's one-hit wonders. Of course, those things all exist, but the better strategy like Seth would contend in this book is to focus on the right dip. Work really hard to figure out what dip is the dip that you should be slogging through, that you should want to persevere through the thing that you think you can be really exceptional at if you're able to put that time in. And that's why quitting is an absolutely essential skill as you go through life, because you've got to trial and you've got to test, and you've got to quit a lot of things that don't make sense in order to find the one thing that does, because like Seth says in the book, “The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don't know.” Or, “The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.”

(08:43)

And so I think that that'll be the last couple of quotes that I leave you with. There are tons of them in this book, as well as little strategies to help you sift through the dips in your life, whether it's a career or whether it's an artistic endeavor, this book will be very, very helpful for you and will help you look at something in a completely new light. It might actually relieve a lot of stress in your life as well. Not that it won't confront you with some hard truths, and I think that all good authors do that. They put you in the position of having to answer tough questions. I think that's the hallmark of a really good writer, whether it's in the non-fiction world or the fiction world. And so this book will definitely do that, but it'll be a fun read and it will be an enjoyable read, and it will be a fast read, a book that you can read over and over again. It's only 96 pages.

(09:30)

Lastly, I should mention that I had the pleasure of interviewing Seth on the previous iteration of this podcast, It's Not What It Seems. You can go back in the archives of this show since it's on the same feed and you can listen to that interview. But I'm also thinking about adding a segment where I replay some of my favorite interviews from my old show, but that's just a sneak peek. It's something that I'm thinking about. All right, this episode is a wrap. I want to thank you so much for listening. I hope you found it impactful. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please remember, to share with family and friends. Word of mouth is everything in trying to get something out there. And with this show particularly, it's the initiative, right? Inspiring more men to read and bringing together men who do. This is a really important cause and it's something that I'm extremely passionate about. So please continue to support, and if you really want to double down on that rate review, follow the show and let other people know that it's a pretty cool show that they might want to check out as well. Remember, for more information, you can always visit BooksforMen.org, or you can also sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of all the books and authors you hear on the podcast.