Dip or Dead End

Seth Godin's book The Dip offers a crucial distinction. A dip is the long, hard slog between starting and mastery where most people quit. Push through it and the rewards are outsized, because fewer competitors survive. A dead end is a path where more effort will never produce better results.

The skill is telling them apart. In a dip, the fundamentals are sound but the work is hard. In a dead end, the fundamentals are broken no matter the effort. Learning to code is a dip: it gets harder before it gets easier, but persistence pays off. Trying to turn pro athlete at 40 is likely a dead end.