The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Key Concepts

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

“There is a subtle art to not giving a fuck. And though the concept may sound ridiculous and I may sound like an asshole, what I’m talking about here is essentially learning how to focus and prioritize your thoughts effectively—how to pick and choose what matters to you and what does not matter to you based on finely honed personal values.” (p. 13)

“Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.” (p. 14)

“Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.” (p. 17)

“Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.” (p. 18)

Problems are ever-present; it’s about making your problems good

“Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded.” (p. 31)

“Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress—the solutions to today’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems, and so on. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.” (p. 31)

Having poor or ill-defined values is what causes people not to focus their energy on the right things

“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. But when we choose better values, we are able to divert our fucks to something better—toward things that matter, things that improve the state of our well-being and that generate happiness, pleasure, and success as side effects.” (p. 88)

The Do Something principle

“Taking advantage of this knowledge, we can actually reorient our mindset in the following way: Action → Inspiration → Motivation” (p. 161)

It’s about choice

“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.” (p. 171)

Quotables

“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.” (p. 5)

“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.” (p. 9)

“In my life, I have given a fuck about many things. I have also not given a fuck about many things. And like the road not taken, it was the fucks not given that made all the difference.” (p. 12)

“Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy.” (p. 19)

“This is why our problems are recursive and unavoidable. The person you marry is the person you fight with. The house you buy is the house you repair. The dream job you take is the job you stress over.” (p. 35)

“A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, ‘What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?’” (p. 36)

“What determines your success isn’t, ‘What do you want to enjoy?’ The relevant question is, ‘What pain do you want to sustain?’” (p. 38)

“We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.” (p. 94)

“Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we learn something new, we don’t go from ‘wrong’ to ‘right.’ Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong.” (p. 117)

“When we let go of the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves, we free ourselves up to actually act (and fail) and grow.”(p. 139)