Throughout the duration of the project evaluate it to understand the ‘effort vs benefit curve’ you are in: The Dip, The Cliff or The Cul-de-Sac. Then write down the conditions under which you will quit, knowing these up front will allow you to come back to a clear set of guides and not make a rash decision in the moment which you may later regret. Our time is our most precious asset and how we chose to spend it is where the true power lies.īefore you start anything, evaluate it and be brutal, do you see a real benefit for you to start learning French, learn to scuba dive, train for that marathon, etc. In order to know when (or what) to quit you have to first realise that it is an option, a real option, which requires consideration.
What I took away from this book is that it is OK to quit, and actually winners nearly always quit! They just understand how to decide up front and evaluate situations to determine when it is time to quit and what they should quit. Now the “quitting” covered in this book is not purely the traditional “quitting your job” type but he provides a framework which you can apply to many situations (projects, relationships, jobs, fitness programs, learning new skills, etc) to determine whether it is time for you to quit. The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick).Īs you may expect with a book this short (under 100 pages) it does not go into a lot of detail but Seth has a thought provoking writing style which urges you to think long and hard. Of the many books authored by Seth Godin I chose The Dip partly for its length but mostly for the interesting topic it covers: chuckle 24:34 Seth Godin: I’m not giving up, but I’m not getting through because every time a committee meets, the committee consists of the majority that want something to be for everyone and the minority that understand how the world is. Sometimes only a short sentence and other days an essay, but the key here is that he has been consistently creating every day!
For those that do not know Seth he has been diligently posting a blog post each day, every day, for the past 20 years on a host of interesting subjects. I used to read Seth Godin’s blog on most days.