This weekend while traveling to a family event I read Seth Godin’s book The Dip. Don’t let this little 80 page book fool you. There are a ton of crucial ideas in here, and very few (if any) limited to business.

Some of my favorite lines:

• Quit the wrong stuff.
  Stick with the right stuff.
  Have the guts to do one or the other.
• But I don’t care about the long tail right now — I want to show you the short head.
• Best as in: best for them, right now, based on what they believe and what they know. And in the world as in: their world, the world they have access to.
• People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of. […] For good enough instead of best in the world.
• Mostly I’m angry that it took me this long to be able to describe how simple the solution is.
• The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quiting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.
• You’re Astonishing How dare you waste it.

Godin illuminates, educates, and enrages between passing reference to Zipf’s law, challenging our school system, and intimating that “first to market” only works if you push through a Dip that is long enough and deep enough. (And Hugh Macleod’s illustrations make a great counterpoint with lines like “But what if I fail?” “We all get to laugh at you.”)

My inner neuro-linguist cringes at the use of the word quit, but Godin’s whole book is one big reframe of “quitting”. My inner mathematician cringes at the poorly labeled “graphs” and yet they demonstrate nicely the difference between a Dip, a Cul-de-Sac, and the dreaded Cliff. And it all leads up to the punch line — if you can’t be #1 then quit before you’ve begun.

Go order The Dip and while you’re waiting for the package check out these serendipitous posts:

• Steve Pavlina’s Quitting to Win
• Richard Lee’s Banana… Grasshopper.. Or… Jedi?

What do you need to quit in order to be #1 and reach your goals?