The month was February. Season was at that sweet spot where it's not too cold to not go out and not too sunny to decide to stay in. Time was noon. I was deep into my CA Final preparations for the may attempt. I had just picked up one of my most dreaded subjects of CA curriculum: Audit. Maybe because I was reading audit after a whole year or maybe it was the fact that I got lowest marks in audit in my intermediate exams, regardless of the reason, I felt like giving up on exams all together just after completing one chapter. So I kept my books aside and went for lunch break. Like any other panicked student having the biggest exam of their life in just 3 months, I opened YouTube to search "How to complete CA final Audit in X days". But before typing anything, I saw the first suggested video and it was a book summary. The book seemed a little familiar and I recognised the author. Seth Godin is a marketing genius and having read a few of his bestsellers, I clicked on the video just for a few minutes of refreshment. I recognised the book immediately, although I had read it a few years earlier. "The Dip: a little book that teaches you when you quit and when to stick" is a book that delivers exactly what it markets: when to quit and when to power through the pain. And certainly a book that helped me power through at that point and in the months to come.
Now that you have some background about the significance of the book, If you have time, I'll suggest you to give it a read since it is of less than 100 pages. But knowing the schedule of a CA student, I'll explain the relevant parts in shortest way possible. You can thank me later ;-)
Seth divides the challenges or curves we face in life into three categories: A dip, a cul-de-sac and a cliff. Starting with cul-de-sac, meaning a road to nowhere is a situation where it's all work and work and work but nothing much changes, neither for better nor for worse. A cliff on the other hand is a situation where you work and work and work. You can see that it's a dead end but there is no way to quit before you reach the end. You have to keep working until you fall off or the whole thing falls apart. You have to identify these curves and quit them as soon as possible.
Another curve in life is a dip. A dip is the long slog between starting and mastery at any task. When you start learning a new skill, you'll feel like you know very less. The more you keep learning, the more you'll feel like you know nothing and that there's a long long way to go. That is the onset of the dip. But as you keep learning, you'll hit the bottom of dip and eventually start getting up. After that it's a smooth journey. The key differentiator between winners and quitters is the onset of this dip. When you keep learning more and more and the feeling of knowing less and less keeps sinking in, some people decide to power through that fear and pain and come out of it as winner while some decide to change lanes. Seth even goes on to say that the deeper the dip the better. He says, "In a competitive world, adversity is your ally. The harder it gets, the better chances you have of insulating yourself from the competition."
A deeper dip creates a barrier to entry, which is very much the case in a course like CA. You have to realise that although you are slogging away your days and sacrificing everything for this profession, not everyone has the patience and energy to do that. And you should try to leverage that to your advantage. Knowing that not everyone can surmount what you are fighting for should be what motivates you to wake up everyday with a never giving up attitude even though you couldn't achieve 100% of your Target the day before.
When I started my first revision of Audit for CA Finals, I first picked up bank audit. Even though it is something we read about in Intermediate as well, it felt like I was studying everything for the first time. I had to leave standards on auditing (that covers easily 30-40 marks) in my first revision due to time constraints but I made it a point to give more time to audit in next revisions to cover it properly. For me and for most students who prepare for CA final exams, first revision and sometimes second revision as well is the onset of this dip. Most of us take coaching or start self study years before exam and by the time we sit for revisions, our mind has forgotten majority of things. But that is a part of the process, as any person who has gone through the same will guide you. All you have to do is power through this feeling of fear and uncertainty and keep studying. There will be days when you don't achieve even 60% of your Target and there will be days when you pick up a new subject or chapter and your mind gets blank. Remember, the secret is to power through that feeling and to not give up.
Or to quote Seth, "The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing".
