Goodreads: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

Every now and then, I will come across an article that gets my heart pumping (that isn't erotic literature), that makes me scream "yes!" silently and pound my fist on the bar in the MRT. This is likely the first time this has occurred in 2015 and "Goodreads" will be a collection of... such good reads I come across. Don't worry, it's not that I have become a philosopher-king overnight. I'm just the thinking man's retail trader.

The article that has the honour of being the first Goodread is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. Let me set out my thoughts below on the article and hopefully your interest is sufficiently piqued to read it.

As we age and advance in life, we start to get a little more comfortable. We also come into possession of more things. We get pay raises. Homes. Kids. Possessions. With more things coming into the picture, we own more but we have more to lose. Some of us may feel that we also lose a certain edge we once had. The feeling that you could drop your things down and leave them behind, with nothing to lose. The feeling that you don't give a fuck about anything. Freedom as a bird.

Mark's article struck a chord in me, and revived that feeling in me. It strikes me that perhaps over time I have grown to be giving a fuck about certain things that I do not need to be giving a fuck about. I want to get some of that back in me. In a healthy way without undoing any progress made in life. You can call it conscious desocialisation.

And here's are my takeaways from his article. 3 points from me.

1. Not giving a fuck is about daring to be different. That's different from aiming to be indifferent to all things. The latter suggests protecting one's emotional state by numbing one's response to stimuli, by disengaging. Is that living? The former involves engaging your passions to do what you feel for. Even if everyone thinks it's quirky or weird or wrong. Which one sounds better to you?

Napoleon Dynamite - Quirky, but happy? Happier than most of us?

Have there been times of late where you have held yourself back from doing something, due to how you think society will view you?

2. We need to find a mission in life. Once we do, the issues that used to bug us, will no longer bug us. Remember the auntie who likes to complain about everything and threaten to write to the ST Forum/CASE/STOMP/hardwarezone just to frighten a vendor into giving a further discount? Remember the bitch in the office who likes to make bitchy remarks about other womens' bags/hair/boyfriend/overseas trips? This is because they have not found anything better to do with their life, and so they occupy their world with such "minuscule" issues. Once you find your mission these people simply disappear from your radar. Or at best, you think of them like a tiny bug pest. You have better things to do. Embarrassment and self-consciousness fade away. Nothing can stop you.

Do you sometimes think that the things you have invested time and effort in are actually quite meaningless?

3. There are only so many things we can care about in life. This is especially so as we get older and our time and energy become limited. So please start to think hard about what are the things worth caring about. Priorities. Pardon my love for football analogies but it's like being a Pirlo, an Alonso or a Gerrard. They get on with age but they can still be very effective footballers because they conserve their energies and focus on doing certain things very well. Every move and step they take is measured and deliberate. There's no need to run around the pitch like a headless chicken if you know how to position yourself to be at the right place at the right time. Time your runs up the pitch. Guide team-mates around you instead of doing all the grunt work. Ration your movements, but make them count. That's what we should be doing as we age too. 

Have there been times where you feel you have too many things to do, and yet when you think about what are the things that are important to you, you realise you have been neglecting those most important things?