Second Lamppost: creative media from Brian Hull

Once you have defined parameters for quitting, it is time to get to work. Successful people lean into the dip. Do not be passive. Be aggressive, push harder and change the rules. Under most circumstances pulling through the dip is not a question of being good enough. Instead how dedicated are you? If you want to be the best at anything the answer better be complete. The dip is not kind to those who waiver.

There are a few tools to help you survive. First, even if it feels excessive, return regularly to your plans for quitting. Are you quitting everything you should be quitting? There is a difference between fighting your way through the dip, and languishing in an unprofitable endeavor. For each task on your list ask yourself, “does this further my end goals?” If the answer is no you must quit.

Second, recognize the positive situation at hand. At times the dip can be discouraging, which is why most people don’t emerge on the other side. The repeated theme of The Dip is adversity creates scarcity, scarcity creates value. When you get frustrated, Godin reminds, “adversity is an ally, the harder it gets, the better chance you have of insulating yourself from competition.” Always keep in mind we get frustrated in the dip for the same reason the end reward is so exponentially great, because the curve to success is so steep. If you can see this barrier as an advantage you are one step closer to success.

Most importantly, build a support team. As we have seen, success in the dip requires specialization. A support team rounds out your skill set, but it also gives you the encouragement to continue your own trek up and out of the dip. Many of us get trapped into believing we can do everything better, but the most successful people surround themselves with the brightest, most talented team available. “Giving up control and leaning into the organization gives you leverage” says Godin. This step is non-negotiable. Take a look at any model for success. Even those who developed the work alone, such as Hemmingway or Bob Dylan, had a network to lean on for encouragement and inspiration.

This process does not guarantee success. Much of that is left to your fortitude and discipline in the face of adversity. But planning ahead and coming armed with these tools will certainly improve your odds.

Note: This article is part 3 in a 3 part series on Seth Godin’s book The Dip. If you missed it, go back to part 1 and part 2.

To read more about The Dip I suggest you purchase The Dip by Seth Godin. Seth is a writer/blog/marketing evangelist with several best selling books on business and marketing. I also recommend checking out his blog and his book website for The Dip.

We hit the dip in between the beginners rapid acquisition of skills and complete mastery. This lull in the process is where most people settle or quit. Our growth slows and many people lose interest or determination. The dip is what defines the importance of our work. The steeper this final ascent is, the fewer people emerge on the other side. In order to thrive during this process it is important to marshall all of your resources to help buffer your chances for success.

This requires sacrifice. We have all been taught to value well rounded people. But in order to reach the pinnacle of any worthwhile endeavor, you will have to give up this perceived value of a broad skill set. The dip is about specialization and about being the best in the world. Godin points out a fallacy in education that anyone who reads books of this nature are likely to abide by, “Hardworking, motivated people find diversification a natural outlet for their energy and drive…and yet the real success goes to those who obsess.” With the rare exception of a Bach or Michelangelo, we must sacrifice diversity to succeed.

This specialization means quitting. It means quitting a lot. Godin insists, “quitting regularly to free up the resources to invest in the right business”. Before beginning define what conditions will cause you to quit. Quitting in a frustration or in a panic is amateur. If you want to open a restaurant, map out at exactly what loss of margin and what decline in customer base will cause you to quit. The failure in quitting is not realizing when to quit. Like the restaurant owner who peddles Italian one week and Thai the next, grappling at gimmicks as he watches his business sink.

Lets be clear on what quitting means. Quitting is always a strategy for furthering ones end goals. That means our rock star should never quit music. But if his profession is drumming, he may not have time to learn guitar, produce other artists, and pursue photography on the side. Quit products or features within your market, never quit the market. Quitting the market itself can lead to cyclical short-term quitting. The market is something you are passionate about. Simply walking away may bring back the itch at a later time, causing you to have to begin the dip all over again. Quitting is a long term strategy, not a short term fix.

Note: This article is part 2 in a 3 part series on Seth Godin’s book The Dip. The final installment in this series will discuss leaning into the dip and building a support team. If you missed it, go back to part 1 or read ahead to part 3.

To read more about The Dip I suggest you purchase The Dip by Seth Godin. Seth is a writer/blog/marketing evangelist with several best selling books on business and marketing. I also recommend checking out his blog and his book website for The Dip.

Seth Godin’s book “The Dip” encourages habitual quitting to reach your goals. It sounds like an odd suggestion, but the strategy narrows ones focus to increase the chances of success. In essence you are targeting the dead weight in any process and eliminating it before it drags the entire project under. It proposes a much scarier alternative to simply staying disciplined and slogging it out, something Godin argues is often a waste of time. Regular quitting requires individuals to actively reassess their work and situation.

So how can you know what to quit? “The Dip” is based on intensive planning, not knee-jerk reactions. You quit because you planned to quit. What this requires is a clear picture of what success means to you. Say want to be a rock star. Will regional club gigs, a local residency and a loyal fan base cover it, or do you need a Columbia Records contract and sold out shows at Shea Stadium? Be honest and be as specific as possible. Not defining where you are going makes it tough to know when you’re getting off track, and just as frustrating, it makes it impossible to know when you’ve arrived.

When considering these goals think about your market. As Godin points out, “best” in any market is subjective according to the individual and their “world” is a selfish definition based on what each person has access to. This means “best in the world” in a regional market is entirely different from a national or international market. Defining your goals means defining your market and considering what is required to reach that market. If you need to sell out Shea Stadium think about who already does that: Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, U2. You have a lot of work ahead of you, but you also have models to work from.

These models of success help exemplify the work, resources, and output necessary for a given market. Godin calls this balance “creating pressure”. This is your Goldilocks space. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Once you have defined your target market take stock of your resources. How much money and time do you have for this venture. If these resources match with your defined market it’s time to get to work. If your assessment shows you have enough resources to easily flood the market, perhaps you should pursue a larger goal. The same rings true if you currently have limited resources available. Want to be a rockstar but you work 9 to 5 with only Saturday nights free? That’s ok, but perhaps your first target market should be performing as a regional act and building up demand for future growth, not packing Madison Square Garden.

An important note: When considering resources commitment to getting through the dip, regardless of its size, should never be in question. If commitment is a limited resource quit now.  You will be saving yourself both time and effort.

Note: This article is part 1 in a 3 part series on Seth Godin book The Dip. The next installment in this series will discuss how to marshal your resources in order to increase the likelihood of success. Read ahead to part 2 and part 3.

To read more about The Dip I suggest you purchase The Dip by Seth Godin. Seth is a writer/blog/marketing evangelist with several best selling books on business and marketing. I also recommend checking out his blog and his book website for The Dip.

There are a few indispensable tools I rely on to help create this site. One of them is my Blackberry Curve 8900. In a recent mobile web usability article, Jakob Nielsen pointed out that most gadget reviews online focused on phone features and mentioned nothing regarding the ease of completing various tasks. I thought I might discuss a few tasks I utilize my phone for everyday and the ease, or lack there of, of completing each task.

First of all, Blackberry is the king of mobile email. Their email client makes it easy to add multiple email addresses, and the large font size stretching the full length of the screen makes it easy to quickly read a message. Support for HTML email is moderate to poor, but I have found that HTML only emails are often still legible, they simply have empty boxes in place of large images. Creating messages is a snap. The QWERTY keyboard, while a tad small, has a good tactile feel and the To: and Cc: fields have great features like auto inserting the @ and ‘.’ in email addresses.

Web browsing itself can be a bit more difficult. I use both the Blackberry browser as well as Opera Mini and am much more satisfied with the Blackberry offering. While Opera does a better job of rendering a site as it would appear on my laptop, it has a tendency to de-emphasize text. This makes reading almost any non-mobile site a challenge. The Blackberry browser has a zoom feature which automatically appears when a site first loads. The difficulty with this feature is at times the zoom tool tip will disappear right as you hover over your target. It can create an awkward situation where you have to locate a tiny space just to the side of your target area and try to hold the tool tip still as you click the track ball. Still, even on the edge network load times are typically reasonable and most sites are navigable as long as you don’t have visual impairment issues.

The OS navigation is fairly intuitive, even if many of the icons suffer from similar appearance. And learning hotkeys like Alt+Escape to quickly switch programs helps accelerate the process. Blackberry has a few included programs I really like including the camera interface, and voice notes recorder. Both work almost exactly the same in terms of menus and navigation. Most importantly, both programs make it extremely easy to email or upload your media. While driving I can easily record a voice note and email it to myself with less attention than it takes to dial a contact.

Finally I use a number of third party apps. The most notable include TwitterBerry, Viigo, and Remember the Milk. With the possible exception of Viigo, it feels like developers aren’t intent on designing truly usable Blackberry apps at the moment. Perhaps this is due to the lack of an Apps store like the iPhone and G1, though Blackberry plans to launch their own store in the coming weeks (since this writing the Blackberry Apps World is now live). Programs like Twitterberry make no use of intuitive navigation, requiring the user experiment with the Escape and Menu buttons on various pages to find all of the available features. Font size is typically unforgivably small on these applications. Even with 20/20 vision I have to hold my Blackberry to my nose at times to read through my twitter timeline. Again the exception to this is Viigo, which is the best RSS feed reader I’ve found on Blackberry. It gives the feed the entire width of the screen and utilizes the same font size you have set for email and other tasks which makes reading blog updates extremely easy.

Ultimately Blackberry still feels a little business-centric, even on the consumer targeted Curve. The navigation is good but I’d like to see a few more customization options and a better web browser interface. But text functions such as email and SMS are still unrivaled and the QWERTY keyboard makes two thumbed typing lightning fast. Where I hope to see the biggest improvements is in 3rd party apps. As the app store brings developers and consumers under one roof, hopefully applications will stop resembling retooled, dumbed down versions of iPhone apps and begin utilizing the inherent assets of a Blackberry.

edit: Since writing this I poured half a Starbucks Venti over my car console, including my Blackberry Curve. I popped out the battery, sprayed the keys out with a CO2 canister at work, and dropped then handset in a bowl of rice overnight to absorb the moisture. The next morning it fired up with no ill effects.