Getting Past the Dip

Seth Godin has a cute little book called The Dip - it's only 80 pages. Within those pages, though, is a bit of useful information. Says Godin, there are three kinds of projects, jobs, endeavors, etc.: The cul-de-sac - you'll never get anywhere; the cliff - it will seem pretty good till it all falls apart; and the dip. The dip is the most common, and it's what you're looking for. It's the kind of challenge that not everyone will succeed in - otherwise it wouldn't be a challenge - but that those who persevere and have some talent should be able to get through.

This bit struck me as particularly useful for the aspiring polyglot (in general, not in particular):

Whatever you do for a living, or for fun, it's probably somehow based on a system that's based on quitting. Quitting creates scarcity. Scarcity creates value.

If everyone could learn to speak five or six languages comfortably and with ease, there'd be no value in being a polyglot. Let's be candid: Along with a love of language and culture and a desire for knowledge, there's also a point of pride in mastering multiple languages. It's an interesting thing to mention about yourself at parties, it gives prospective employers the impression that you're smart and it allows you to talk amiably with people that others cannot. There's a prestige factor, because whether or not everyone can learn multiple languages, the fact is that most people don't. That's one side of the dip and the value of quitting: if others quit, then those of us who don't are by default special in some way.

The problem with being special for not quitting is knowing whether it's foolish stubbornness or perseverance and dedication that is keeping you from quitting. Most aspiring polyglots have a language or two that they'd rather not talk about, one where they bought all the books, studied really hard, then gradually ceased to study or to remember much of the language. Godin makes the point that sometimes it's time to quit. Unfortunately, instead of quitting deliberately to better use our resources elsewhere, we often let the process of quitting without admitting it sap our energy and keep us wasting resources on something we know in our gut isn't going to happen.

Finally, there's the problem of trying to quit and not managing it. This is what happened to me with Mandarin. And the process has led me to believe that it's one of my dips, in Godin's framing of the matter: something that will be worth it to me for sticking with it at the point when I was ready to hang it up.

When we decide to learn a language, we need to have a better reason than "because it's there." There should be something that comes after knowing the language, some change in the way you live your life. For me, for Mandarin, it's access to a local culture that intrigues me but that I'm way outside of that is my motivation. And that has dragged me back in, multiple times. When I can go to the bookshop, follow what the people in front of me in line are talking about and make small talk with the clerk, I might be satisfied. But until then, there's something I sense I'm missing out on that makes it worth learning. So I'll push through my dip and get a decent handle on Mandarin in time. But there are other languages in my past that will likely stay in my past.

How is your language learning going? Are you in a dip? Or a cul-de-sac? If you know why you want to learn, and can keep yourself convinced of it, but energy's low right now, you're probably in a dip and will one day come out the other side into an even more exciting world than the new, novel one you so enjoyed when you started your studies. But if you've been burned out on a language, slow to pick up your textbooks and can't remember why you started, maybe you're not in that dip. Maybe you're in a cul-de-sac and it's time to do something better with your time than assiduously not studying that language when you could be throwing yourself into a new and more promising pursuit.