Knowing What to Quit When ... and Doing It!

Last year I read through a cool little book (80 small pages with large type) by Seth Godin entitled The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick). While it self-admittedly contained little original ideas, the way in which common sense views were presented made it an extremely valuable read. Below is one of my favorite lessons learned.

While we must each seek out to become "best in the world" (according to whatever definition we choose), there are "Seven Reasons You Might Fail to Become the Best in the World" (p. 33-34):

(1) You run out of time (and quit).
(2) You run out of money (and quit).
(3) You get scared (and quit).
(4) You're not serious about it (and quit).
(5) You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit).
(6) You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard).
(7) You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don't have the talent).

The most interesting part about this list is that for many (if not all) of them, you can plan ahead. With some forward thinking and insight, we can avoid either the wasted time of having to quit an endeavor into which we have already invested significant time/money/effort or the complete disaster of languishing in "The Dip" and failing completely.