📚 Art of Not Giving a F*ck

The key to a good life is not caring about more; it’s caring about less, caring about only what is true and immediate and important.

---

About the book

Author:	Mark Manson
Year of release:	2016
Genre:	Self-Help, Relationships, Lifestyle
Pages:	224
Average WPM:	224
Date Started/Finished:	26-27 Jan-2022
Time took:	3.34 Hours

What I Liked About It and What I didn’t

• What I liked
  • Gives a carefree/laidback take on life
  • Identifies problems and gives solutions to them
• What I didn’t like
  • Not all the metaphors make sense

How I Discovered It

• Found the title interesting in the library/online

Who Should Read It?

• Anyone who cares too much about everything
• If you worry what people think about you
• People in their early 20’s

How my life / behaviour / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

• The book made me feel at ease
• I stopped giving a F*** about things that don’t matter

My Top Quotes

---

The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.

The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.

When you give a fuck about everyone and everything—you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times

People no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck sometimes

Greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear.

Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you’re going to start crying at inappropriate times

Choosing to not respond to the events in our lives is still a response to the events in our lives.

We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.

Summary + Notes

---

Chapter 1: Don’t Try

There’s a saying in Texas: “The smallest dog barks the loudest.” A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s confident.

The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.

The Feedback Loop from Hell

• You say to yourself, “I feel like shit, but who gives a fuck?” And then, as if sprinkled by magic fuck-giving fairy dust, you stop hating yourself for feeling so bad.
• Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual.
• The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.
• “the backwards law” — the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.
• Albert Camus said (and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t on LSD at the time): “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” Or put more simply: Don’t try.
• Ever notice that sometimes when you care less about something, you do better at it? Notice how it’s often the person who is the least invested in the success of something that actually ends up achieving it? Notice how sometimes when you stop giving a fuck, everything seems to fall into place?
• What’s interesting about the backwards law is that it’s called “backwards” for a reason: not giving a fuck works in reverse. If pursuing the positive is a negative, then pursuing the negative generates the positive. The pain you pursue in the gym results in better all-around health and energy. The failures in business are what lead to a better understanding of what’s necessary to be successful.
• The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.
• Like the road not taken, it was the fucks not given that made all the difference.
• While not giving a fuck may seem simple on the surface, it’s a whole new bag of burritos under the hood. I don’t even know what that sentence means, but I don’t give a fuck.
• When you give a fuck about everyone and everything—you will feel that you’re perpetually entitled to be comfortable and happy at all times

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

• There’s a name for a person who finds no emotion or meaning in anything: a psychopath
• Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.
• “Fuck it,” not to everything in life, but rather to everything unimportant in life. They reserve their fucks for what truly matters.

So Mark, What the Fuck Is the Point of This Book Anyway?

• I believe that today we’re facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck sometimes.

Chapter 2: Happiness Is a Problem

life itself is a form of suffering. The rich suffer because of their riches. The poor suffer because of their poverty. People without a family suffer because they have no family.

The Misadventures of Disappointment Panda

• Greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear.
• We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change.

Emotions Are Overrated

• Emotions are merely signposts, suggestions that our neurobiology gives us, not commandments. Therefore, we shouldn’t always trust our own emotions. In fact, I believe we should make a habit of questioning them.
• “hedonic treadmill”: the idea that we’re always working hard to change our life situation, but we actually never feel very different.

Choose Your Struggle

• I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory. And life doesn’t work that way.

Chapter 3: You Are Not Special

The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences.

The Self-Awareness Onion

• Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you’re going to start crying at inappropriate times.

Defining Good and Bad Values

• When we have poor values—that is, poor standards we set for ourselves and others—we are essentially giving fucks about the things that don’t matter, things that in fact make our life worse.

Chapter 5: You Are Always Choosing

Often the only difference between a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that we chose it, and that we are responsible for it.

The Choice

• Choosing to not respond to the events in our lives is still a response to the events in our lives.

The Responsibility/Fault Fallacy

• Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense. Fault results from choices that have already been made. Responsibility results from the choices you’re currently making, every second of every day.
• I learned more from that single problem than dozens of my successes combined.

There Is No “How”

• I say, in my best Yoda impersonation: “Do, or do not; there is no ‘how.’ “
• You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else.

Chapter 6: You’re Wrong About Everything (But So Am I)

Certainty is the enemy of growth. Nothing is for certain until it has already happened—and even then, it’s still debatable.

Instead of looking to be right all the time, we should be looking for how we’re wrong all the time. Because we are.

Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.

Architects of Our Own Beliefs

• Human mind is capable of coming up with and believing in a bunch of bullshit that isn’t real. And it turns out, we’re all really good at it.
• Emo Philips once said, “I used to think the human brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
• The human mind is a jumble of inaccuracy.

Be Careful What You Believe

• Our mind’s biggest priority when processing experiences is to interpret them in such a way that they will cohere with all of our previous experiences, feelings, and beliefs.

The Failure/Success Paradox

• We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.

Pain Is Part of the Process

• VCR questions are funny because the answer appears difficult to anyone who has them and appears easy to anyone who does not.

The “Do Something” Principle

• Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
• Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.

Chapter 8: The Importance of Saying No

It became far more valuable to present yourself in a certain way, even if it was false, than to actually be that way. Trust lost its value.

Rejection Makes Your Life Better

• The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X.
• If we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all.

Boundaries

• It’s not about giving a fuck about everything your partner gives a fuck about; it’s about giving a fuck about your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives. That’s unconditional love, baby.

The Sunny Side of Death

• You are already great because in the face of endless confusion and certain death, you continue to choose what to give a fuck about and what not to.