The Dip by Seth Godin

The Dip by Seth Godin is a short and solid book about the decisions we make to either stick with things or quit them. He makes the point that single-minded determination and a never say die attitude not always a good thing, it often is better to move on from something and focus energies elsewhere.

The idea of the dip as Godin describes it is the hard period of something, the long slog between starting and mastery. Almost everything has a dip. It’s supposed to be there and is in effect a barrier to entry that creates value. Also, Godin points out that many professions have superstars and then a bunch of also-rans. Second or third place isn't a terribly successful place to be. The goal really should be to be the best at something, even if it a small area, not to muddle your way to an ok level of competence. Pushing through the dip is a good thing, what you don't want to do is quit in the middle of the dip, when it's hard, but still worth it to succeed. 

It's noted that along with dips, there's also cul-de-sacs, spots where no matter how hard you try, things won't get better. Those are the dead ends that should be abandoned. Godin also points out that coping is a lousy alternative to quitting. All coping does is waste your time and misdirect your energy. If the best you can do is cope, you're better off walking away. Highlighted is that winners quit fast and often, and then beat the right dip for the right reasons. Quitting the things you don't care much about, are mediocre at, or aren’t going anywhere (a cul-de-sac) frees you up to push through the dips on the things that do matter. When you are ready to quit something, go for broke, be willing to ask for what you want, and willing to walk away. Going into new situations lets you reinvent yourself; you've left behind those who have branded or pigeonholed you.

The right idea isn't "never quit," the right idea is "never quit something worthwhile just because it's hard at that moment." Don't quit your strategies, quit your tactics, and remember that a particular job is tactic, not strategy. Getting through the dip is never quitting the big idea. "Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other." 

"The Art of Non-Conformity" by Chris Guillebeau

After learning about it from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (which I enjoyed quite a bit), recently finished reading The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau.



Really solid book by Guillebeau that has some excellent stuff around living and working and some of the things that stood out to me (which I may be restating for my own use) are the following:

The often harmful idea of working to live

Concept from Guillebeau is that too many people view work as a have-to-endure slog to achieve some distant future goal of then enjoying life. The opposing view he trumpets is that life short and someone should think of how they want to live and start doing that.

The often excellent idea of taking a different tack

Direction given in the book prologue is to "think for yourself instead of following the crowd" and follow on idea that it ok to dream of unrealistic things... even if they don't come to pass (and they could), usually no harm done. To this point, Guillebeau writes about the concept of worst case scenario planning and whether said worst case really enough to not do something considered (with this same idea in the Ferriss book).

Approaches to a work

Guillebeau notes that regardless of whether someone works for a boss or is self-employed, their best job security is own competence. As someone who has done well with self-employment, he describes it as self-reliance and notes that many businesses can be started very cheaply (and may not make someone rich, but perhaps enough to make a living)... an idea which almost certainly led to Guillebeau's recently released The $100 Startup book. In relation to working for others, he writes about someone hiring a boss rather than being hired by a company. Even if not taken as far as in the book example, there's still something of heft there around someone targeting the type of work desired to do.

Recommendations of additional resources to check out

People, books and websites noted by Guillebeau include the Anne Lamott book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, the Seth Godin blog (or his website), the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, Zen Habits by Leo Babauta, and Guillebeau's own Art of Non-Conformity website (which includes his "A Brief Guide to World Domination" document that led to the book).

Really a solid book overall from Guillebeau and an interesting life he's created for himself with his writing, speaking and teaching... all stemming from an unconventional approach towards his work and time. A final thing I found of interest was an anecdote told in the book Postscript about someone unsubscribing from Guillebeau's blog and leaving a "thanks for everything, but I need to go it alone now" note. Interesting story that to me hits on a point about how-to and self-help type books... just ruminating on them is good and well, but the import of action and forward movement (even if the destination not known) can't be overstated.

A Whole New World Out There - Writing on Opportunities & Education

The James Altucher book I Was Blind But Now I See that I reviewed yesterday was timely as I've seen a raft of pieces lately on Altucher's topics of education and opportunity.

A pretty firmly held idea from the book was traditional higher education being overvalued and in the past two weeks I've seen M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All from Forbes and mention of the organization Code Year and it's push to have people learn the skill.

Additionally, there's been a number of other pieces recently that at least in part echo the the Altucher refrain of there being opportunities out there for those willing to pursue them.

Seth Godin wrote in his The chance of a lifetime blog post of how it may be a rough time for traditional business as usual, but the conditions are there for innovation and entrepreneurship. This concept reminded me a blog post from Clay Travis titled 2011 Belonged To Twitter, So Does the Future of Sports Media. The piece from Travis is about Twitter, but beyond that, there's the theme touched on by Godin and hammered at by Altucher (easier of course to go deep in a book) of technology and how it's created, enabled and changed communication and business.

Also interesting from Travis was his mention of things to come in the form of Twitter monetization... which brings to mind Altucher's encouragement to think of and write lists of ways to utilize existing technologies. On this subject, I recently came across the blog post bitly in 2011 from the URL shortening company heavily utilized on Twitter.

Lot of opportunities and ways to move towards them being written about out there.