When to Quit and When to Stick?

Guy Kawasaki interviews author Seth Godin on his new book, "The Dip" Apparently, the book deals more with start up issues - but it has implications to life. When is the right time to call it quits?

Question: Other than hindsight, how does someone know when it’s time to quit?

Answer: It’s time to quit when you secretly realize you’ve been settling for mediocrity all along. It’s time to quit when the things you’re measuring aren’t improving, and you can’t find anything better to measure.

Smart quitters understand the idea of opportunity cost. The work you’re doing on project X right now is keeping you from pushing through the Dip on project Y. If you fire your worst clients, if you quit your deadest tactics, if you stop working with the people who return the least, then you free up an astounding number of resources. Direct those resources at a Dip worth conquering and your odds of success go way up.

What’s the worst time to quit? When the pain is the greatest. Decisions made during great pain are rarely good decisions.

Question: Should America quit the Iraq War?

Answer: My opinion doesn’t matter. But I hope my method matters a lot.

Here’s what we know: it’s easy to record and print a CD and hard to make a hit. Easy to write a book and hard to make it a bestseller. Easy to build a website and hard to create a viral success. We also know, and I hope Dick Cheney now knows, that it’s easy to invade a country and hard to be a successful invader and to dominate and change a culture.

So, the questions are simple: Are we in a Dip in Iraq? Everyone knows we’re in pain, but is it the pain that comes from being in a dead end—a cul-de-sac—situation that might very well get worse but probably won’t get better? Or is it a Dip, where sufficient effort can push us through and get us out the other side…we better know the answer.

The giant mistakes were made early. Cheney didn’t tell us what the Dip would look like, nor did he outline what we would do when we hit it. That’s a big difference between the current team and Churchill or Roosevelt. If you’re not ready for the Dip, it’s a lot harder to stick through it.

PageMill, Wells Fargo and Sam Zell

Dear Friends, Normal.dotm 0 0 1 888 5066 Northern California Urban Development 42 10 6221 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false As many of you know we've been in discussion recently with Wells Fargo and Equity Residential, the proposed buyers of the former Pagemill Properties on the west side of East Palo Alto. As an East Palo Alto resident and leader I view this issue, and how Wells Fargo handles this important portfolio as a milestone event for our community and it’s residents. First, a little background (from my perspective): A few years ago over 80% of East Palo Alto's multi family housing stock was purchased piece by piece by a predator equity group, Pagemill Properties. After the purchase Pagemill began systematically dismantling our rent control ordinances and aggressively evicting working class families. The community was in shock. However, the Pagemill group went bankrupt in 2009 and lost the property to Wachovia,...

Non Profit Payday Loans?

Here's a recent New York Times article sent to me from Katie at NCHM on payday lending. I know that the NCUD / CTCU-EPA partnership is going to have to create the right program addressing the needs for short term lending for low income families. We don't have the answers yet, but it's definitely on our radar. APPLETON, Wis. — This city of 70,000 has five McDonald’s franchises, three Pizza Huts, four Starbucks shops — and 19 payday loan stores, brightly lighted storefronts with names like EZ Money and Check Into Cash that offer two-week loans without credit checks. Peggy Truckey, 53, knows the allure. Last year she owed nearly $1,300 to four of those stores, and was paying about $600 a month in finance fees alone. “I thought I was going to have to take a second job just to pay off the interest,” Ms. Truckey said. Then she heard about a new nonprofit program operated out of a Goodwill thrift store, one of several hundred lower-cost payday loan products that are now bein...

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