The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
Ratings927
Average rating3.6
I struggled with completing this book. It sounds like a self-help book for rich kids. The author uses his own life experiences to make sweeping statements. I found it difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. The little bit of concentration that I could manage only showed that he was just rehashing old ideas with a lot of expletives (which got on my nerves) and without any really meaningful examples. This made it really hard for me to connect with this book. I'd never recommend it to anyone interested in reading self-help. If you want to read a self-help book, please do not waste your precious time reading this book. Go read [b:The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change 36072 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Powerful Lessons in Personal Change Stephen R. Covey https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1421842784s/36072.jpg 6277] by Stephen Covey instead!
I think the only way to tell you about this book is to share some of my favorite bits of wisdom from Mark Manson.
1. Happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Who you are is defined by what you're willing to struggle for.
2. There is no such thing as a personal problem. If you have a problem, chances are someone else has it too.
3. Certainty is the enemy of growth. Nothing is certain until it happens and even then, it's debatable.
4. Don't just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
5. Sometimes you think you want something but it turns out you don't.
6. We don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is.
I just finished this book and was glad I read it, but it's more entertaining than enlightening. Blogger Mark Manson introduces a way of thinking (or not-thinking) that you might call “stoicism with cursing.” The basic gist is that concepts are arbitrary, and the standards we use to judge ourselves are often foolish and impossible to justify. Furthermore the book serves as a commentary on current cultural norms, which focus on feelings instead of healthy pain and hard work.
Manson's prose is fun to read and his choice of anecdotes is clever and edifying. I would have preferred a different title that I would be able to explain to my kids, but I guess that wouldn't sell as many books. Manson works best when he is telling other people's stories and using them to illustrate his points. As someone older than the author I had a hard time taking him seriously when his greatest qualification is “blogger.” As with many books in this field, I skimmed the last two chapters, as Manson made his point early in the book, supported it well on the middle, then ran out of steam at the end. It got repetitive. But it was fun to read and I recommend it.
I like Mark Manson's blog. And there are some good ideas in this book. But, unfortunately, his book is remarkably tone deaf and really quite sexist.
He talks about unreliable memory. But his example of unreliable memory... is a woman with a false memory of sexual abuse. He talks about the importance of being honest with people. But his example of him being an honest and trustworthy partner he is... is him telling his wife she looks like shit.
This is a book written for young fairly privileged men. And so it is unfortunate that when he talks about a victim mentality he mocks college life ‘safe spaces'... and not men who attack women for playing video games or complain about comic books pandering to the PC police.
It's a shame he spends time talking about men jailed because of false rape accusations but never mentions men killing women because they falsely believed they were cheating.
The truth is, he conflates the inevitable trauma and grief that is a part of all human life, with the systematic trauma and oppression that comes about from living under a patriarchal, capitalist system. This system is designed to remove people's agency and ability to choose. You can't respond to it in the same way that you respond to individual loss, like the death of a close friend. One requires collective action, the other requires individual responsibility. And this book does not recognise the difference between the two, and chooses instead to hype up individualism at every step.
Malala cannot single-handledly dismantle the Taliban, however much we love our hero narrative. We all have choice and responsibility, it's true. What Mark misses, is the fact that those of us with more agency and privilege need to step up and take responsibility for the safety of other people as well. Not by taking part in a co-dependent relationship, but by examining and dismantling the systems that keep some people powerless and other people overpowered.
Pretty sweet book actually, but more like “The subtle art of giving a f*ck about some things.”
In Chapter One alone, 106 f*cks were given. Fortunately the rest of the book is more reasonable.
Mark talks a lot about entitlement and taking responsibility; lessons he's personally acquainted with. Hard truths in quotable format. I think the reviewer who called this dressed up Buddhism nailed it.
I'd suggest reading a few of his blog posts first. You'll know really quick if you want to read a whole book of them.
Received this as a present from an awesome librarian friend, who said I would love it. Other than her great recommendation, I hadn't heard of Manson before, so didn't have expectations. His writing is of the moment and funny, and I enjoyed his Buddhism-light meets philosophy meets pop-culture advice. Nothing new but wrapped in a clever and concise package. Enjoyable and definitely recommend as book for discussing with a partner/friend/book group.
I couldn't put the book down. If you can get past the f*bombs sprinkled all throughout the book, there is a lot of blunt, real advice that can shake you awake. Particularly the principle that you are responsible for everything that happens to you, especially the meaning you attached events and happenings in your life. As I went through this book, it sparked very radical and profound thoughts that made my heart flutter and mind race. If I act on these impressions and thoughts in the near future, my life could take a very unique course for the next year or two.
I recommend this book to anyone that has read other self-help books and found them to be too woo-woo or to ‘light' and not blunt enough to tell it like it is. There really isn't anything new in here you couldn't find in books by other more well-known authors, but the way it's presented with its coarse language is refreshing.
It was fine. Pretty repetitive and the audio book has a white guy doing some really bad, unnecessary accents.
Inspired me to read into Stoicism and other ancient philosophy. Really loved the no-nonsense, practical approach Manson describes.
I picked this book up on a lark after seeing it on the bestselling list at the bookstore. I admit that the first few chapters are engrossing and even make sense. It is, at best, an extended version of the serenity prayer i.e. focus on the things you can change and ignore the ones you can't. There are definitely some lessons in there that many of us need to be reminded about but nothing that can't be said in a longish blog post. The latter half of the book simply drags on and focuses mostly on the author's personal life and his life-coach blogging.
I would recommend reading the first 2-3 chapters of the book in couple of hours and then tossing it aside.
Another nice book about defining your priorities and what you want and expect from life. This one forces you to look at things in an objective way and to define real, tangible values for yourself, on which you can work on, and not some material success or keeping on comparing to others. This book made me laugh quite a lot of time, as it's written in a blunt way and doesn't cut around the edges, but god did it felt good.
“I say don't find yourself. I say never know who you are. Because that's what keeps you striving and discovering. And it forces you to remain humble in your judgments and accepting of the differences in others.”
This is a book about self-awareness. What Mark Manson would probably tell you, and he'd probably be right, is that you don't have enough.
“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.”
He describes three layers of the self-awareness onion: 1. A simple understanding of your emotions. 2. The ability to ask why you feel an emotion. 3. Personal values which determine how you measure yourself and those around you. Personal values define success and failure. This last level he says is the hardest to get to and is “full of f*cking tears.” But it's the most important because “our values determine the nature of our problems, and the nature of our problems determines the quality of our lives.”
“Everything we think and feel about a situation ultimately comes back to how valuable we perceive it to be.” And “What is objectively true about your situation is not as important as how you come to see the situation, how you choose to measure it and value it.”
There's a lot of wisdom there if you're ready for it.
As you might have guessed by now, the title isn't really descriptive of the book. Mark, in fact, gives lots of f**ks, they're just about the things that are in line with the values that he's determined are worth caring about which are:
1. Radical responsibility. You don't control everything that happens to you, but you're responsible for it.
2. Uncertainty - realizing you're ignorant and need to constantly reevaluate what you believe.
3. Willingness to fail and recognize your own flaws.
4. The ability to be rejected and to reject others when their values don't align with yours.
5. Contemplation of your own mortality for the purpose of keeping perspective.
All five of these values are united by one theme: recognition of our incredible propensity for self-deception.
We tell ourselves all kinds of stuff: It's not my responsibility. I have no problems! My problems are the worst ever. I'm special and unique. The world owes me something. I'm going to live forever. I can't help how I feel, I'm the victim here. I'm going to be the greatest ever. It goes on and on.
Recognizing the self-deception we so willingly engage in and reframing it in context of our chosen values is the main message of the book. It's a tough message and it's easy to miss the gravity of it because, as Manson's Law says “The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.”
You probably won't read this for the same reasons I almost didn't. First there's the hyperbolical title, the fact that Manson is just a blogger and because it's a self-help book that, like most self-help books, says it's different from all the others. Maybe you won't like the casual tone or the humor which sometimes feels a little forced. It'd be easy to pass up for those reasons, but you'd be missing out. It's a short, informal book, but it's is anything but shallow.
I am a very self-conscious person. To a fault. I constantly question everything I say or do (usually after they've been said or done) and agonize over it, worrying about what other people think or thought of me. All the time.
In short, I give too many fucks.
This is not a life-changing book. I don't think any book truly is. But sometimes you just need someone to tell you something in a certain way to make you look at things from a different perspective, and that's what this did for me.
In the first few chapters he talks about the general principles of the book. Life is a problem to solve. Failure makes us better. Confrontations are better not to avoid. You are responsible for yourself. Choose good values. Decide what to give a fuck about. Those are some of the things I've already tried putting to use at work. Will I keep being able to do that in other aspects of my life for the foreseeable future? Maybe, maybe not, but this book has planted the seed already, and it's up to me what I do with it.
It's clear that Mark is a very experienced person in life, and I loved some of the stories and anecdotes he told. It was a way of seeing how the tips he talked about could work out in real life. It also never made the book feel boring or hard to get through. Quite the opposite!
On a last note: if you have the option, get the audiobook. The narration by Roger Wayne is absolutely excellent and just made it all the better.
“Who you are is defined by what you're willing to struggle for”
“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.”
These are the two biggest quotes I took out of this book. It's chalk full of examples pertaining to the two, which was woven entertainingly into a much larger narrative. I took this one in as an audiobook, and I found the narrator perfect for the content.
A wonderful book for people who want to figure out how to be happy and fulfilled, but who don't go in for navel-gazing or “spirituality” as such.
The casual, snarky tone and detailed personal examples make the counter-intuitive lessons easier to grasp. You may not be interested in puzzling out Zen koans, but Manson makes it easy to understand how craving positive experiences is itself a negative experience, while acknowledging negative experiences is itself a positive experience. Or how problems are the source of happiness (you just have to choose the right problems). Or how rejection is an essential part of accepting a positive experience.
He also does a pretty good job of dismantling cultural misconceptions about self esteem, relationships, and boundaries. I didn't find his opinions to be gospel truth on every front, but generally speaking he hits the nail on the head.
I felt like the opening of the book was the strongest part, with the profundity and usefulness diminishing toward the end. But that may be because I've never tended to have the problems he talks about toward the end of the book.
I absolutely loved this book and can't wait to share it with others. In short: Stop worrying. Live life how YOU want to. Take care of yourself and LOVE yourself. Stand behind your choices and do what you want to. Learn to say no. Face your fears. Challenge yourself. Quit waiting for others to save you. Quit waiting for life to give you want you “deserve”. Like it or not, everything that happens to you is a result of your own choice. You may have no been given that promotion at work, but you also didn't ASK for it. You don't like your weight, but you've done nothing to change it.
Read this book. Listen to its advice. Learn from its stories and live life however the fuck you want.