Book Review: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Context

I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (SAoNGaF), by Mark Manson, at the turn of the year between 2022 and 2023. The holidays are typically a calm, reflective, and restorative time, but I'd been feeling a little burned out and aimless, and my usual practice of reflecting on the prior year and setting new goals was falling flat. I'd been working really hard at my job, which is the source of a lot of personal self-worth, and not feeling much of a sense of progress. At the time, I'd had several consecutive days of ending the day with a headache which was driving a lot of unnecessary and outsized frustration towards people around me. Overall, I felt like I'd been mid-witting my way through life, giving a fuck about so many things with little to show for it, and needed an infusion of a different kind of life philosophy. Enter SAoNGaF.

I mention this because the context and timing of a book are at least as important, probably way more important, than the quality of the book itself. If I'd read this book in a different headspace, I may have taken it as a collection of banal and mostly unsubstantiated self-help platitudes. Instead, it registered as a coherent approach to life that unpacks how embracing things we are typically conditioned to avoid is actually the best way to ultimately find what we're looking for. Overall, this book really landed and actually served as the activation energy for me to create this blog and write this review as the inaugural post.

Below, I'll summarize each chapter, then provide my key takeaways.

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Chapter Summaries

Don't Try

The book begins by clarifying the title. Not Giving A Fuck does not advocate for resigned indifference - not giving any fucks in general - but instead for giving a fuck about only the most important things. The opening chapter also introduces The Backwards Law, coined by philosopher Alan Watts, which states that pursuing something gets you further from that thing. Most importantly, pursuing pleasure leads to pain, and pursuing pain leads to pleasure. Why? Because pursuing pleasure has an implicit precondition that you are not pleased already. And if you are in perpetual pursuit of pleasure, you are always subject to this precondition and therefore always unhappy.

These related ideas - Not Giving A Fuck, which requires narrowing your focus, and The Backwards Law, which requires changing your perspective - are developed throughout the rest of the book.

Happiness is a Problem

This chapter develops and helps to operationalize the Backwards Law. Happiness is not a problem in the sense that it's problematic, happiness is solving problems. Problems never go away, they just get exchanged or upgraded (or downgraded). Problems exist to give our lives purpose; typically any achievement or feeling of joy is defined by what one had to endure to realize it. This dovetails nicely with the Backward's Law: by pursuing pain, you put yourself in a position to solve problems, which is the essence of being happy. Therefore, instead of asking "what do I want?", which typically leads to banal answers that cause you to pursue pleasure, instead ask "what pain do I want?". That question will serve as a much more meaningful compass towards happiness.

You're Not Special

The foundation so far is that happiness is realized by pursuing pain, because problems are what give life texture and problem-solving is the key to happiness. Mark explains how people operate in complete opposition to this reality. They think they are special and undeserving of pain, which is a form of denial. Or, they feel sorry for themselves that they have to endure pain, which is a form of victimhood. Mark argues that the middle, orthogonal path, which rejects both denial and victimhood,  is the way: accept that you are not special, your problems are not unique, and fall in love with problem-solving and improvement.

The Value of Suffering

At this point, we've established that we need to pursue pain to be happy, because problem solving and improvement are the essence of happiness. You can try to deny that you have problems, or wallow in self-pity for having problems, but both are an ultimately futile form of entitlement because the tollbooth of reality will eventually collect. The quality of your problems defines the quality of your life. In this chapter, we learn how to engage with and solve our own problems, which is by interrogating the problem and asking: why do I have this problem? why is this problem true, why does it matter to me? Usually the problem will involve some sort of failure...why does the failure matter?

The framework by which we judge a problem's worth are our values. Aligning the problems we encounter with our values and embracing them, or discarding them if they don't relate to our values, is how we practice the Subtle Art. And it explains why solving problems makes you happy: because problem-solving offers each of us an opportunity to practice and assert our values. For someone who likes to intellectualize everything, I enjoyed the internal consistency and relatedness of the ideas in the various chapters.

Mark explains that good values are "reality based, socially constructive, immediate and controllable". They are things you can opt into at any time, that you have agency over, rather than things outside of your control. He gives the example of honesty. Honesty is a good value by these criteria: it reflects reality because you're telling the truth (reality-based), it benefits others (socially constructive), and you can decide to be honest at any time (immediate and controllable). The rest of the book is then devoted to explaining Mark's values:

• Responsibility
• Uncertainty
• Failure
• Rejection
• Mortality

You Are Always Choosing

We now transition to what is effectively part 2 of the book, an inquiry into Mark's values. The first value is responsibility, and honestly, out of all the chapters in the book, this was my favorite. It thunderously ended the pity party I'd been throwing for myself and implored me to move forward. Responsibility means being "100% responsible for what happens in your life, no matter what". Mark has a nice play on the quote, "With great power comes great responsibility", which is sometimes attributed to FDR but actually only traces back to Uncle Ben from Spiderman, and instead offers, "With great responsibility comes great power". If you realize that every problem you face in life presents an opportunity for you to decide how to respond, it completely changes the lens through which you look at hardship, whether that hardship is externally or self-inflicted. This notion of complete ownership immediately registered as one of those things that's always true, whether you decide to embrace it, accept it or reject it. So you may as well embrace it, and act accordingly.

There's often a confusion between fault and responsibility, which Mark clarifies. Fault is past-tense, responsibility is present tense. You may not have caused a particular problem to land in front of you, it might not be your fault that the problem exists, but you are responsible in the present tense for you respond.

You Are Wrong About Everything

The next value is uncertainty. And not just uncertainty, but perpetual uncertainty. You will never be "right" and trying to be right sets you up for disappointment. Instead, the goal is to be less wrong. What resonated most for me from this chapter is the point that for your life to change, you have to be wrong about something. Therefore, you should seek doubt, because doubt is a signpost for growth.

Failure is the Way Forward

No softballs after responsibility and uncertainty, as the next value is failure, which, along with being wrong, continues one of the main themes of this book which is pursuing things we're conditioned to avoid. The main thing I took from this chapter is that if someone is better than you at something, it's likely because they've been willing to fail more. As adults, we tend to avoid failure. But that is probably a learned behavior (in my case, the American education system with its emphasis on evaluation, straight A's, and good test scores is definitely a contributor). Behind fear of failure is usually some set of values that are too externally dependent and need to be upgraded. And upgrading values that don't serve you is totally OK, because as mentioned in the last chapter, you are always wrong and the goal is merely to become less wrong over time.

The Importance of Saying No

The next value is rejection. In the same manner that our problems define our lives, our identities are defined by what we decide to reject. The main thing I got from this section was about relationships. The book explains how healthy relationships require two things:

1. Clear responsibilities for one's own values and problems. This can be justified by what has already been explained. People should not try to solve problems for you, or vice versa, because solving your own problems is what makes you happy.
2. Acceptance of rejection. This is the mechanism by which we set clear responsibilities.

Not building in space for these two things can lead to codependency, which results in two people who are weaker in a relationship than they would be outside of it. In my view, a relationship should exist only if it accomplishes the opposite.

And Then You Die

Finally, we come to the bitter end. The last value is mortality. Some key quotes that landed for me: "If there really is no reason to do anything, then there is no reason not to do anything" and "Give a fuck about something more important than your insecurities and baggage". There's nothing like a healthy awareness of one's own mortality to separate the wheat from the chaff in life. But more than just focusing on the important things in life, death should stoke a deep form of humility: what can I do that's greater than myself? That truly makes my insecurities and baggage seem trivial? Commit yourself to that thing, enjoying the process of facing problems, being fully responsible for your experience, embracing uncertainty, failure, and rejection...and you will have a life well-lived.

Key Takeaways

There's a lot here and a lot I won't remember, even if it resonated while reading the book. My main takeaways, the things that sparked the most positive mental changes and the things that I'll hopefully remember a year from now, are the following:

• When faced with a problem, interrogate it and determine whether it's true. If it's true, why?
• Having someone else solve your problems for you will not make you happy. Only you solving your own problems will make you happy.
• Be 100% responsible for what happens in your life, no matter what.