Of Dips and Curves...

I feel like giving up. Almost everyday in fact. Not all day of course,  but there are moments...no I am not a manically depressed woman, venting every moment I get in blogosphere...this was the first sentence of a small  book that I started reading yesterday... here's how it played out -

I have been busy the past eight weeks, tired too and mostly not put together (which is unlike me)...Things got a little hectic this week and I forgot to sign K2 up for PTO (parent's night out) and we had no plans in place anyway...on Wednesday K2 asked me if I had signed and I sheepishly admitted to - not, his indignant look followed by disappointment (he believes it should be parents/kids time out vs. just PTO) was enough impetus for me to somehow wrangle him into the PTO...this left me and K1 with 5 unplanned hours -- initially our plan was to watch a Hindi movie (amc mercado if you are interested) and get some Desi food ...but once in the house, neither wanted to move...so dinner was an easy naan pizza washed down with a Muscat while watching an offbeat German movie Soul Kitchen (on Netflix...). A and K got engrossed in a market discussion that I wanted no part of, so I migrated upstairs and started reading "The Dip"...my sole criteria for picking it being the size (76 pages)...and I was hooked. It wasn't an earth-shattering book yet it made me question my internal belief system...

For a person who lived with the mantra "failure is not an option" - hearing someone say -that you will never be the best in anything unless you learn to quit intelligently -- felt just wrong. However, I didn't stop reading the book and it started making a lot of sense - I started my career working at GE in India and Jack Welch was a legend there  - When Jack Welch remade GE, the most fabled decision he made was this: If we can’t be #1 or #2 in an industry, we must get out. Why sell a billion-dollar division that’s making a profit quite happily while ranking #4 in market share? Easy. Because it distracts management attention. It sucks resources and capital and focus and energy. And most of all, it teaches people in the organization that it’s okay to not be the best in the world. Jack quit the dead ends. By doing so, he freed resources to get his other businesses through the Dip.”... isn't that what quitting strategically is all about?  I am sure I will go back and read and re-read this book...it came to me at  a time when I needed it.

How is your weekend turning out? I watched my little guy play a Tee-Ball game and the sun is shining brightly outside, a relaxed lunch of pupusas at Amelia ...maybe a long relaxed walk in the evening. No fixed plans for Sunday -- maybe sit in the library for an hour and a stroll down the Farmer's Market...