The Dip – A Book Review
I’ve got to say up front that this is a dangerous book. A VERY dangerous book indeed. You have been warned. *grin*
I say it is dangerous because The Dip by Seth Godin is going to fill you with more questions then you have right now. You will be forced to stop and look at everything you are up to right now and decide if it is still worth doing. Thankfully it is is a short book (under 100 pages) because it is also one that as soon as you start reading you will not put it down until you are done.
The basic concept of “the dip” is that it is that moment in the middle of whatever you are doing where you have to work harder then ever to achieve any more success. We’ve all been in the dip and I would bet that everyone reading this is in one right now in their professional or personal lives in one form or another.
Where most would tell you to keep pushing forward no matter what and to never quit, Seth will tell you the exact opposite. He encourages quitting. He wants you to give up and move in a different direction if there is no chance that you are ever going to get out of the dip and onto greatness. He is not advocating quitting blindly, but rather strategically and honestly looking at where you are and where you want to be and make a decision to succeed or quit. That’s some powerful mojo when you stop and really marinate on what that means.
As an added bonus the very funny Hugh MacLeod illustrates the book. There is one that I want to frame and hang on my wall involving chess pieces, but it’s not online anywhere that I can find to do so. Hopefully sometime they will be.
Long time readers and listeners have heard me talk about the concept of a new media bookshelf. This is one of those books that if you are remotely interested in this space you have to buy and read right now. In the back of the book there is a page geared towards sharing the book with others and then getting it returned. I love the concept, but can’t part ways with this. It already has notes written in it and highlighter marks throughout as I’m going back through re-reading it again.
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Comments(3)
[...] I’ve been busy already this morning and it feels good. I’ve edited and posted crayonCast #22, listened to Steve an I on SecondCast, wrote a quick review of The Dip over on Managing the Gray and responded to a pile of e-mails. I’ve still got another pile to go through (yes I try to organize my e-mails) so we’ll see if I can get through some of those during some of the lesser interactive calls I have this morning. [...]
I followed the Hugh MacLeod link to gapingvoid.com and noticed there was a chess-piece graphic there, perhaps the one you’re refering to but could not find:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003939.html
Yes, since posting this he has posted the cartoon to his site.