• Being the best in the world is seriously underrated.
• I feel like giving up
  • Every day, in fact. Not all day, of course, but there are moments.
• Quitters never win and winners never quit
  • This is just plain bad advice.
• Winners quit the right stuff at the right time.
  • Most people quit, they just don't quit successfully.
  • If you learn about systems that have been put in place that encourage quitting, you'll be more likely to beat them.
  • And once you understand the common sinkhole that trips up so many people (I call it the Dip), you'll be one step closer to getting through it.
  • Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.
  • Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.
  • In both cases it's about being the best in the world.
• Quit the wrong stuff.
• Stick with the right stuff
• Have the guts to do one or the other.

The best in the world

• Hannah - lawyer. In order to get as far as she's gotten, she's quit countless other pursuits. You really can't try to do everything, especially if you intend to be the best in the world.
• The Surprising Value of being the best in the world
  • The rewards are so heavily skewed, so much so that it's typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the benefit of #100
  • Ice cream flavors example.
  • Zipf's law. Applies to resumes, college application rates and best-selling records and everything in-between.
  • Chris Anderson - The Long Tail
• The Reason Number One Matters
  • If you've been diagnosed with cancer of the navel, you're not going to mess around by going to a lot of doctors. You're going to head straight for the "top guy", the person who's ranked the best in the world. Why screw around if you get only one chance?
  • With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.
• The Real Reason Number One Matters
  • Scarcity makes being at the top worth something.
  • It comes from the fact that most competitors quit long before they've created something that makes it to the top. That's the way it's supposed to be. The system depends on it.
• The Best in the World?
  • Best as in: Best for them, right now, based on what they believe and what they know. And in the world as in: their world, the world they have access to.
  • So if I'm looking for a freelance copy editor, I want the best copy editor in English, who's available, who can find a way to work with me at a price that I can afford.
  • That's my best in the world.
  • The mass market is dying. There is no longer one best song or one best kind of coffee.
  • World is selfish. It's my definition, not yours. It's the world I define, based on my convenience or my preferences. Be the best in my world and you have, at a premium, right now.
• The Infinity Problem
  • In just about every market, the number of choices is approaching infinity. Face with infinity, people panic. Sometimes they don't buy anything. Sometimes they but the cheapest one of whatever they're shopping for.
• Is that the best you can do?
  • Organizations settle too. For good enough instead of being the best in the world.
  • If you're not going to put in the effort to be my best possible choice, why bother?
  • The reason that big companies almost always fail when they try to enter new market is their willingness to compromise. They figure that because they are big and powerful, they can settle, do less, stop providing something before it is truly remarkable. They compromise to avoid offending other divisions or to minimize their exposure. So they fail. They fail because they don't know when to quit and when to refuse to settle.

The Biggest Mistake They Made in School

• Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
• How often do you hope that your accountant is a safe driver and a decent golfer?
  • In a free market, we reward the exceptional.
• In school we tell kids that once something gets too hard, move on and focus on the next thing. The low-hanging fruit is there to be taken; no sense wasting time climbing the tree.
• The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.