It's ok to quit.

Sometimes, you really wonder if there's such a thing as a coincidence. Yesterday, while slugging the manic-Monday-post-holiday morning out, I began getting frustrated and depressed because I thought, I'm better than this. I want to die knowing that I was really good at one thing, and I felt what I'm not getting closer to that end.

That afternoon, my Korean friend slash book buddy dropped by the office to lend me a book I've been looking all over for: The Dip by Seth Godin. On the front cover, the book is described as "a little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick)."

It is a small book, but there's a lot in it worth chewing over. So what is the Dip? The Dip is the sinkhole that trips up people to prevent us from being the best at something. It's the pain that makes you stop exercising before it pays off. It's the difficult bar exam that prevents all law graduates from getting to the other side, where a handful of lawyers enjoy six-digit salaries and prestige. It's the hardship and cost of perfecting a product that makes businesses settle on being number four instead of number one.

The book teaches you about strategic quitting, i.e. don't even start something if you know you're not going to be the best in the world at it; quit if you're just doing what you're doing now because it's easier to stick to the familiar; quit if you've settled on having average skills, leading an average life, because you can be the best if only your energy and resouces are not (gasp!) misdirected.

In order to know when to quit, you should be able to recognize which sort of curve you are in: is it the kind that, if you chose not to quit and go all-out to conquer it, will yield results that will benefit you for a long time (the Dip), or the kind that tells you to quit not soon but now because you're heading towards a dead end (Cul-de-sac), or maybe the curve where you just can't quit until it comes to be a matter of life and death, like smoking (the Cliff).

These concepts are not new, of course. We already know that we all have serious potentials, we know that if something is difficult then it's probably worth doing, and if you're a motivated person, goal-oriented person, you will agree that being average is the most despicable thing to become. But what really stuck to me was the idea that being well-rounded is not the way to success. Everything we learned in school is wrong! You won't be sought out as the best in the world at something if you're good at everything. In college, I wanted to get straight A's in all subjects. I'd get two or three A's, make sure the rest are B+'s and settle for B on the subjects I don't like. Boy, if only I didn't waste energy on all those subjects and focused on the one class that got my rapt attention and made me look forward to going to school. If only I used up my units on PR classes instead of spreading them out on film and advertising too... I didn't know it then, but I should have pursued the quest for specialization, not excellence.

I was so attracted to being multi-talented, to the thought that I could master anything that life set me up for. I might have sacrificed a couple of years for a post-college degree, and it would entail staggering costs, being away from home, physical, mental and emotional suffering, but from all that would accrue life-long benefits that include being highly valued, happy and fulfilled.

I want to say so much more about the book, to share my thoughts on it, but mostly it would be about me and the decisions I have made. So I'll stop here. I know, it's depressing. But the good news is that it's not too late. We can quit whatever we're doing now, whether it be sticking to a situation too long just because we've become comfortable, or keeping our potentials dormant by indecision and inaction... it's not too late to quit. In fact, the time is now. By letting the Dip keep us down, we are making those on top more valuable. You and I are good enough; there's only ourselves to convince.