You'll Always Lose Interest in Everything - The Dip - FutureIQ

8,263 views Wait, is this logic right? • Sep 23, 2023

Slog Reference: The Dip

Description

Do you start things and never finish them? As you might be aware, you're not alone who suffers from this problem. Many, or almost all of us lose interest in things so fast that we avoid completing them. This phenomenon is known as The Dip. We've dedicated this episode to explain this phenomenon and find out how to overcome such a situation do be able to complete things we start and achieve better results.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

The book: https://tapthe.link/DipSG

Other Episodes:
Why Things In Life Should Be Hard: https://youtu.be/2T1lADkGtZY
Make 10 Years Plan: https://youtu.be/iZ8wG4bT4wg
System 1 system 2: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4
Spaced repetition: https://youtu.be/JAPwrsm5OeA
Effort shock: https://youtu.be/8SuR0lJR8ig

#futureiq #deliberatepractice

Related Slog Matches

The Dip

Manual

100.00

Transcript

0m 01s do you find yourself starting projects and then after a while giving up because it turns out to be like more boring than you expected or pointless or frustrating or just impossible where have you hidden the cameras in my house I mean why have you eaten cameras in my house because that is exactly what I do I start so many projects never finish what my mother used to call me sure right so basically means you start and you never finish anything and I mean it's not just a matter of uh you know giving up easily accepting yourself you actually tried you put an effort and then you reach a point where you realize that this is not making any

0m 48s sense uh and it is not fun yeah right well this episode is about this concept called the dip which happens in any project and the overall point is that anything worth doing anything important will always reach a stage like this where it seems like there is no point in continuing this and you have to get past that stage only then will you do something important in life only then you succeed right so the dip yeah the reason it's called the dip is because let me explain right imagine you are drawing a graph right so x axis is time and y-axis is either the progress you are making uh every week or whatever or the excitement you feel your emotional

1m 37s state right whenever you start a new project initially it rises very fast it does it does and then comes a peak after which things start falling it gets worse and then what I would call I mean initially there is optimism right yes lots of it we can call it uninformed optimism because you just didn't know the difficulties right that's why you were excited this episode is going to be painful yeah then comes the informed pessimism yes right and then comes the value of Despair that is the point where you say you know what I didn't realize all these issues and now there is no point in continuing this right the point is that there is a point in continuing

2m 24s this I feel attacked I feel seen no no no this episode has a solution [Music] you have to get past this informed pessimism and this value of Despair okay because everything in life right everything that anybody has done successfully any important thing they went I can guarantee you they went through a similar phase the only difference between them and the people who give up is that they persevered it they continued through that difficult period okay and then slowly instead of your uninformed optimism you slowly start Rising against uh with informed optimism I don't like you anymore you are beginning to sound like my parents I don't like I don't like this he's sounding exactly like lectures

3m 18s that I have heard during my childhood stick with it it is important okay I know it's important but so I mean the story of my PhD okay uh around I mean I started found an interesting problem made a lot of progress quickly then around year two it was like nobody even cares about this stuff you know even if I solve this problem it's not going to make a big difference right and things like that and then I went and talked to my advisor and other professors and they say oh don't worry about it everybody feels uh like this right everybody feels like this and you just have to get past it yeah okay that is the first time I

4m 02s encountered it and of course because they were there to tell me I persevered and I did my PhD and of course it turned out to be a good thing and all of that but this is there everywhere else also okay the point is that if there wasn't this value of despair this wouldn't be something worthwhile right everybody would have already done it and nobody would even talk about those things right I like the phrase value of Despair because that is exactly what it feels like Despair and yeah a valley so um I when I wrote about this on a Blog I got a lot of responses from readers right who pointed out how this is applicable in so many different areas

4m 50s right so reader Finn Krishna pointed out that this is the story of most startups right when they first get the idea they're very excited and there's like you know lots of enthusiasm and then slowly reality sets in you hit obstacle after obstacle you have trouble getting customers or you get customers but they don't pay and things like that right too many startups die at this stage this would be usually the one and a half two year Market okay only when you get past the dip right then you start succeeding as a startup okay right uh reader Mita points out that the supplies in relationships also right initially first time you meet exciting phase and you

5m 31s know you know what I'm talking about yes but then after a while now suddenly the relay has become boring and you have to work at it and you're getting into fights all the time and so on and you have to get past that stage right uh in fact in a lot of marriages go through this dip around the six to ten year mark there's a movie on it the seven year each yeah well I mean that focuses on the wrong things but in general I have seen that a lot of marriages have a tough time around the six to ten year time even if neither of them is interested in cheating right but just it

6m 07s seems like too much work and not worth it right yeah only when you get past it after that the relationship matures and Mellows and then Things become better right interesting a reader minalini points out that as a culture we tend to ignore the dip okay because when somebody goes through the dip and then they succeed there is like everything is about the success everything is about you know yeah like the overnight success which took 10 years and nobody talks about the uh I mean see in all overnight successes if you see there is like a long period of difficulty that's right so for example you would remember the game Angry Birds huge success right massive and

6m 55s overweight success yes but do you know how many games they tried and failed at before Angry Birds became an overnight success uh how many 51 they were almost at bankruptcy right wow and then this succeeded so they were just at the dip they didn't give up and then they made Angry Birds right this overnight success of Angry Birds was actually 51 games yeah no but coming back to my knight of 51 games coming back to manalini's uh comment which is that because we celebrate success right and we don't focus on the dip everybody just assumes that oh if I was going to succeed I would not be in this value of Despair right I wouldn't

7m 38s be frustrated like this so they assume that if you are frustrated or if you think it is pointless that this is the right time to give up and I'm not like those talented people yeah that's a mistake yeah because uh and her minalini's comment reminded me of another thing that a friend told me um he has named his company 23 hours 23 hours because he says that the 1R you see me performing uh is actually based on the way 23 of 23 hours of work that it took me to get there yeah so in fact that we are going to cover uh in a future episode called effort shock or you know the uh effort I mean everybody underestimates

8m 25s the effort that is taken for success and expertise but coming back to the dip uh one more example is that if you are in the professional World business right you must have heard of the Gartner hype cycle okay I am not in the business so tell me the Gartner is an analyst and they analyze companies they analyze technology areas and so on and one of the things they publish is a hype cycle where the they say that you know in any technology initially there is a lot of optimism lot of hype around it correct and then you reach the peak of inflated expectations about the technology then slowly things start you know you start seeing the real problems and you

9m 14s hit the trough of disillusionment okay okay after you get past the trough of disillusionment at that point some technologies die some companies never make it past this but the ones who get to the slope of enlightenment then they get to the plateau of productivity and that's where you make money whoever named these different parts of the graph definitely had a very Zen Outlook towards life so for example and and you can see this is just the same concept yeah being applied to an entire industry instead of one person or one project right correct so Gartner's so an example Gartner's hype cycle for artificial intelligence as of year 2022 says that uh you know things like uh

10m 00s chat GPT generative AI is right now at the peak of inflated expectations yeah whereas self-driving cars are in the trough of disillusionment right yeah whereas just older things like just use of computer vision uh face recognition things like that are now already at the slope of Enlightenment right so just just to give you an example a fascinating I wonder how many of these will actually make it out of the trough of disillusionment and uh on to the slope of Enlightenment look at us talking like complete Zen people as if you're like huh yeah but uh so tell me is it is it that if you stick it through the trough of disillusionment you will definitely get on to the slope

10m 48s of Enlightenment or is it that some projects are destined to fail there yes so that that is the difficult part here right there are some things which are just you know pointless it really pointless I mean you know you're just going to try try try and then at some point you have to give up there's no use being a uh damn fool about it right but uh okay the pro the problem is that most people give up too easily that's usually the reverse is not a big problem in society that somebody is just keep trying on and on and on trying uh something which is just has no hope of succeeding usually it's the other way

11m 27s around most people give up too easily because a society hasn't taught them that things are difficult right they are not aware of the effort that it requires to become an expert or to succeed and that's why they give up too easily so usually I would say the basic advice I have is that so persevere longer than you are currently doing one of my readers pointed to something called optimal stopping uh Theory which says that if something is supposed to take a total of say six years then two years you are not allowed to stop uh give up like you know 37 percent is the magic number so if like you know a rule like this is a great rule I think

12m 22s just basically persevere longer than what your instinct tells you that's that's actually not a bad uh marker to have and if you're wondering why he keeps saying readers readers readers it's because he's referring to a newsletter that he writes called again future IQ which you should definitely definitely check out and subscribe to we'll put a link in the comments but simply it is futureiq.substack.com go subscribe to that and it's a fascinating newsletter and in that newsletter it is he'd written um a article called understanding the dip from which a lot of today's uh comments and today's uh observations have been taken uh so yeah that's where the understanding of the dip comes from for me

13m 10s um and uh the key takeaway of this episode is essentially persevere just a little longer than your instinct tells you too unless you have ADHD in which case get yourself diagnosed with yourself medicated because then that will help you persevere for a little longer than your instinct tells you to so uh the concept of the dip comes from a book called The Dip by Seth Godin Seth Gordon is a great writer and this book is like a little teeny tiny book right so uh totally worth uh checking out we'll put a link in the show notes for you to check out so do definitely check that out and uh we are going to dip out

13m 51s of this episode now this is future IQ thank you for watching till the end if like this episode check out these others you might like them also and please share with your friends I'm sure they will also like this