It’s rare that I read, or listen to, an entire book in one sitting. I usually listen to or read a book with breakfast and then decide if I’d rather read the news or continue on with the book. I took only one brief break while listening to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uk by Mark Manson.

I picked up the book mostly because I was waiting for another book that was supposed to be available soon and I had seen it seven times (There are 3 marketing people who found that funny). I was skeptical in part because of the name and in part because of the concept. I think giving a f*ck is a fairly good thing. It turns out that Mark Manson and I agree on that. Not that the title is ironic. He means it entirely, but as he points out in the first five minutes you can’t care about everything.

This is one of the core thesis of the book. If you put too much effort into caring about things that don’t matter, you will have less time to worry about things that do. Spending three hours a day reading the news because you’re convinced that we’re all going to die in a civil war is probably not a good way to spend your time because you’re probably not caring about what you think you care about. I’ll try to channel Mark here and say that what you probably care about is knowing what is happening more than you care about doing anything.

Another major theme of the book is to stop caring about your own suffering. The basic thesis is that humans are never satisfied because they’re not supposed to be. No matter what you have, you will want something more. So the key to being happy isn’t in avoiding wanting something, but in finding something that you can enjoy while you are trying to achieve it. One example he used was the difference between wanting everyone you meet to like you, something you can’t control, and having a better social life, something you can control. Both are largely the same thing, yet the first will make you miserable, the second will not.

Perhaps his most controversial idea is that of responsibility. He states that you have to take responsibility for everything in your life, good or bad. And now those of you who have had something truly bad happen will be upset until I point out that he, unlike most of us, doesn’t conflate taking responsibility with causing something. By using the idea of responsibility correctly, you can be responsible for things you have no control over. Consider for a moment getting cancer. You didn’t choose to have cancer, yet you are responsible for having cancer in the sense that you now have to take responsibility for the actions based on this. You need to be responsible and go to a doctor. You need to show up for the treatments, you may even need to pay for surgery if you live in certain parts of the world. You’re responsible for that, even if you didn’t cause it. Another even easier example that he uses is someone leaving a baby on your doorstep. You didn’t make the baby; you didn’t ask for the baby, but whether or not you want it, you are responsible for that baby. Pretending you’re not will not make things better for you. It will in fact make it much worse.

Finally, he points out something that many of us know, at least in some aspects of our life, and yet rarely seem to act upon. That is that sometimes the more you want something, the harder it can be to get it. The classic example is the desperate dater. No one wants to go out on a date with someone who is so desperate that they ask the person to marry them on the first date. But what if that is true in a lot more aspects of your life than that? What if your desperate need to be promoted is what is holding you back at your job because it makes you resentful and angry towards people who get promoted? What if your focus on making yourself healthy is making you miserable?

Mark explains this far better than I do, with saying that desiring a positive experience is a negative experience, but accepting a negative experience is a positive experience. And if you want more ideas on how to use that strange but instinctively true statement then I suggest you pick up The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and if you just can’t bring yourself to listen to a book with bad language in it, then you need to listen to it even more because you’re working yourself up over things you shouldn’t give a fuck about.