The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life* by Mark Manson

(New York: Harper, 2016), 224

Chapter 1

  • Don’t give a fuck to short circuit the negative feedback loop
  1. Don’t be indifferent, be comfortable being different
  2. You must give a fuck about something more important than adversity
  3. You are always choosing what to give a fuck about

Chapter 2

  • Life always has problems, you want to have good problems
  • Happiness comes from solving problems

Ch 3 - you are not special

  • He believes entitlement is driven by seeing only the exceptional extremes of humanity in the media
  • Ordinary is what actually matters

Ch 4 - the value of suffering

  • Crazy Japanese soldier who kept fighting for 30 years after world war 2
  • Good values: reality based, socially constructive, immediate and controllable
  • Bad values: superstitious, socially destructive, not immediate and controllable
  • First get your values right, then get the metrics you evaluate them by right.
  • Bad values: pleasure, material success, always being right, staying positive
  • Our struggles determine our successes.

Chapter 5 - you are always choosing

  • Act as if you are 100% responsible for everything that happens to you
  • Accepting responsibility for our problems is the first step to solving them
  • Fault is past; responsibility is present

Chapter 6 - you’re wrong about everything

  • Certainty is the enemy of growth
  • Being wrong opens up to the possibility of change

Chapter 7 - failure is the way forward

  • If you don’t know what I do, just start

Chapter 8 - the art of saying no

  • Absolute freedom by itself means nothing. You need to commit to something to find meaning in your life.
  • Interesting discussion of Russian culture and how communist repression led to a culture of honesty and trust
  • To value something we must reject what is opposed to it

Chapter 9 - and then you die

  • Because of our fear of death we all have immortality projects