Ask yourself the following question: Am I stressed out, overbooked, and/or underwhelmed by life?
If the answer is yes to any of these, then pause for a moment to ask yourself: Why?
I’m willing to bet the answer is: Because you give too many fucks. Or, more specifically, because you think you have to give those fucks.
I’m here to help.
During the course of this book, you’ll see the term giving a fuck used in two ways:
• There’s the colloquial sense of caring about something, which factors into Step 1 (deciding what you don’t give a fuck about).
• Then there’s a literal sense of actually giving a fuck to someone or something, in the form of time, energy, and/or money. This factors into Step 2 (not giving a fuck about those things).
In both senses, the only way to change your life for the better is to stop giving so fucking many of them. My NotSorry Method minimizes the time, energy, and money you spend on useless people and things. Admit it: you know exactly who and what I’m talking about!
It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s get started, shall we?
Why should I give a fuck?
This is one of life’s essential questions. Or at least it should be.
Rather than blindly pressing forward and saying Yes, YES, YES!!! to all of the people and things that demand your time, energy, and/or money (including purchasing and reading this book), the first thing you should be asking yourself before uttering that dirty little three-letter word is, Do I really give a fuck?
You may not realize it, but the number of fucks you personally have to give is a finite and precious commodity. Give too many, and you run out—it’s like getting to zero in your bank account—which results in your feeling anxious, stressed out, and desperate. That’s no good! Later on, you’ll make a Fuck Budget, which will help you value and prioritize and stop giving so many unnecessary fucks now and forever.
But before we get to not giving a fuck, let’s talk about when you should give a fuck.
You should give a fuck if something—be it human, inanimate, or conceptual—does not annoy and does bring you joy. Sometimes that calculation is easy and the decision is obvious. Huzzah! Very exciting. But more often—and the reason you need the NotSorry Method—you’re not pausing to make any calculation at all, or you’re making the wrong one.
Most people give away their fucks without much thought. Feelings of guilt, obligation, or anxiety cause them to behave in a manner that, while least objectionable to other people, is often detrimental to their own levels of annoy vs. joy.
This makes no sense and is counterproductive to living your best life. (If you don’t want to be living your best life, you should just stop reading now.)
Still with me?
Okay, then, riddle me this: Instead of feeling guilty, obligated, and anxious, wouldn’t you rather feel empowered, benevolent, and carefree? You’d be like Santa Claus, except instead of toys, you’re walking around with a big ol’ bag of fucks and only doling them out to the boys and girls you deem worthy.
You can be the Santa of fucks!
So stop saying yes right away to please others and, instead, take a moment to question not only whether you give a fuck (i.e., care) about the matter at hand but whether it deserves a fuck (i.e., your time, energy, and/or money) given to it as a line item on your Fuck Budget.
It’s only after honestly answering these questions that we can allocate our fucks to the people and things, tasks and events, ideas and pursuits that annoy us least and, in turn, offer up the greatest capacity for joy.
When you think about it, life is a series of yes-or-no choices, fucks given and fucks withheld. If you continue on your current path, then at the end of each day, or week, or month, you’re bound to find yourself scraping the bottom of your own personal fuck barrel—which is when you’ll realize that all those fucks you gave away were for the benefit of everyone but YOU.
The NotSorry Method changes all that.
It’s time to flip the script, reverse the curse, and stop giving all of your fucks to all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons.
Not giving a fuck: The basics
Not giving a fuck means taking care of yourself first—like affixing your own oxygen mask before helping others.
Not giving a fuck means allowing yourself to say no. I don’t want to. I don’t have time. I can’t afford it.
Not giving a fuck—crucially—means releasing yourself from the worry, anxiety, fear, and guilt associated with saying no, allowing you to stop spending time you don’t have with people you don’t like doing things you don’t want to do.
Not giving a fuck means reducing mental clutter and eliminating annoying people and things from your life, freeing up space to truly enjoy all of the things you do give a fuck about.
This might sound selfish, and it is. But it also creates a better world for everyone around you.
You’ll stop worrying about all the things you have to do and start focusing on the things you want to do. You’ll be happier and more genial at work; your colleagues and clients will benefit. You’ll be better rested and more fun around friends. You might spend more time with your family—or you might spend less, making those moments you do share all the more precious.
And you’ll have more time, energy, and/or money to devote to living your best life. The people who embrace the life-changing magic of not giving a fuck are WINNING.
You want to be one of these people, don’t you?
Who are these mythical people who don’t give a fuck?
In my experience, people who don’t give a fuck fall into one of three categories:
Children
Assholes
The Enlightened
Children
Children pretty much have it made. They don’t give a fuck because they don’t have to. Generally, their basic needs are being met by the adults in their lives, and even if they’re not, children can barely tell the difference. Think about it: If someone else was doing your laundry all day, every day, would you give a fuck about spilling sweet potatoes in your lap or upending a yogurt cup on your head? No, you would not. If all you had to do was scream your face off to get a glass of water or a new toy, would you give a fuck about having forgotten where you put your previous glass of water or having drowned your Tickle Me Elmo in the tickle-me-toilet? Nope! And if you didn’t have fully developed fine-motor skills, would you give a fuck about tying your shoes? Not in a million years.
Part of the reason children don’t give a fuck is that they have no life experience. Their minds are tidy because the world’s bullshit has yet to be heaped upon them. They don’t have anything to declutter, mentally speaking.
Lucky little bastards.
But life is not fair, and they, and you, cannot remain children forever. At a certain point, we all have to suck it up and stop wearing Velcro sneakers. What you can do is find your way back to that magical equilibrium where the burden of adulthood is lifted by embracing the childlike zest of not giving a fuck.
Assholes
Next up, we have assholes. Assholes don’t give a fuck because they are genetically predisposed to get what they want no matter who they have to offend, step on, or—yes—fuck over along the way. (Note: some children are also assholes, but for our purposes that does not matter.) Unlike my pal Jeff, these people are not generally respected or liked. Feared, maybe, but not liked.
If being liked is important to you, then you don’t want to turn into an asshole. Sure, you might free up a few nights on your calendar every week, but it won’t be because you took charge of your fucks and doled them out to events you really wanted to attend and people you really wanted to see. It will be because the invitations stopped coming altogether.
No, my method is about showing you how to have everything you want—and nothing that you don’t want—while also being thought of as a stand-up guy or gal. Which brings me to…
The enlightened
That’s right. You can attain enlightenment without turning into an asshole. It’s possible to revert to that childlike state of not giving a fuck, but with a self-awareness that kids just can’t claim. Look, there’s a long list of things I still give a fuck about (being on time, getting eight hours of sleep, artisanal pizza), and near the top of that list is being polite. Honest, but polite.
For example, if you’re the kind of person who sends a handwritten thank-you note to your friends after you spend the weekend at their lake house, those same friends are unlikely to be offended when you decline their next invitation… to join them at their favorite Renaissance Faire.
It’s just common sense. You like lake houses and hate Renaissance Faires? Send a thank-you note; don’t be an asshole. It’s a win-win!
How can I become one of those people?
The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck is designed to help you achieve an enlightened state of essential fuck-giving without making all the same mistakes I did.
I’ll walk you through each step, helping you inventory your fucks and teaching you to identify whether a fuck needs giving and, if it does not, how to take action without turning into an asshole.
You see, my own journey to a significantly fuck-free life was not devoid of stumbling blocks. When I was just starting out, I stopped giving a fuck in a haphazard way; I attempted some really high-level NotSorry with regard to my friends and family—such as preemptively declining an invitation to a bris before it had been issued. I was so eager to not give a fuck about religious pageantry that I forgot I do give a fuck about my friend’s feelings. At the very moment I sent the Just FYI, I don’t do brises e-mail, his wife was in active labor with their firstborn son. Yikes. I’m still really sorry I did that.
I refined my approach.
At the heart of the NotSorry Method is “not being an asshole.” After all, I didn’t want to lose friends, I just wanted to manage my time more effectively so I could get greater enjoyment (and less annoyance) out of being with my friends.
And I found that a combination of honesty and politeness, exercised in tandem and to varying degrees (depending on what the situation calls for; see “unfortunately timed bris-related e-mails”), results in the smoothest transition to fewer fucks given.
But the fundamental precursor to implementing my NotSorry Method—before we even get to Step 1 or to being honest and polite—is to stop giving a fuck about what other people think.
Let’s go over that in detail.
You need to stop giving a fuck about what other people think
If the NotSorry Method unlocks the door to life-changing magic, not giving a fuck about what other people think is how you get on the property in the first place. Otherwise, you’ll be dog-paddling in the moat surrounding the Castle of Enlightenment, expending all your energy just trying to keep your head above water and fend off hungry alligators.
Not giving a fuck about what other people think paves the way toward taking Step 1 (deciding not to give a fuck). Then, you can express your decisions in a positive and productive way when taking Step 2 (not giving a fuck).
And you can do it without offending or enraging anyone! (Unless you really want to offend or enrage; sometimes that can be fun.)
But first things first.
Please listen when I say that the shame and guilt you feel when you’re trying so hard to not give a fuck? It’s usually not because you are wrong to not give that fuck. It’s because you’re worried about what other people might think about your decision.
And guess what? You have no control over what other people think.
For God’s sake, you have a hard enough time figuring out what you think! Believing that you have any control over what other people think—and wasting your fucks on that pursuit—is futile. It is a recipe for failure on a grand fucking scale.
When it comes to how your fuck-giving affects other people, all you can control is your behavior with regard to their feelings, not their opinions. These are two different components related to “what other people think,” which I’ll discuss in depth in a moment. But for now, let’s look at my method in action re: giving a fuck about things you can and cannot control.
When I was wrestling with the idea of quitting my corporate job to go freelance, I was extremely anxious about all aspects of my decision—chief among them, abandoning my “career-track” and dropping a bomb on my bank account. But I was also consumed with worry about what other people (friends, family, boss, colleagues) would think about my decision. Is she lazy? Capricious? Suddenly too rich to work? Doesn’t she care that the rest of us will have to step in and pick up the slack when she leaves?
Now that I’m a seasoned NotSorry practitioner, I can unpack those feelings.
1. I was happy to do work—I just didn’t want to do it at that particular job anymore. If people think I’m lazy, that’s their fucking problem.
2. I gave my decision quite a lot of thought and planning, and it’s nobody’s concern other than mine if I didn’t.
3. And no, I did not win the lottery. (But fuck you if I had—you’d quit your job too and you know it.)
In hindsight, these were relatively minor worries. The big one was whether, in leaving my job, I would knock other people’s lives temporarily out of whack and whether they would then be upset and blame me for it.
And you know what? When you look at it that way, I’ll take “Things That Are Not My Problem” for $1,000, Alex!
I had to decide to not give a fuck about the things I couldn’t control (like how long it would take my employer to replace me) and only give fucks about the things I COULD control (like not getting up at 7:00 a.m. to leave my blissfully sleeping husband and serene park views to commute forty-five minutes via an underground B.O. factory to a job I no longer wanted to do).
Instead, I’ve started giving a fuck or two to things like “where my next freelance job is coming from” and “keeping my website up-to-date.” But those fucks are gladly given because the freelance life brings me more sleep. And more time with my husband. And my commute is now about thirty feet, from my bed to my couch.
Once I got a handle on the difference between giving a fuck about something, and giving a fuck about what other people think about what I give a fuck about, it all started falling into place.
Feelings vs. opinions
It’s possible that you’re hyperventilating right now. There’s no shame in that. You may be thinking, I can’t possibly stop worrying about what other people think. It’s programmed into my DNA!
Well, listen: Your DNA can only take you so far. In order to live your best life, you’re going to have to hack the system.
There are two reasons you tend to give a fuck about what other people think: one, because you don’t want to be a bad person, and two, because you don’t want to look like a bad person.
You should, of course, continue to give a fuck about what other people think as it pertains to their feelings (i.e., Are you going to actively hurt those feelings by not giving a fuck about the situation at hand?). But be honest—you know full well when you’re hurting someone’s feelings. Don’t be an asshole.
What I’m saying is, you don’t have to give a fuck about what other people think when it comes to their opinions. And if you can learn to speak in the Language of Opinion, you will find it very effective. It’s honest, polite, and extremely disarming! You will neither be an asshole nor look like an asshole. And then you can stop worrying about what other people think.
Got it?
Not yet?
Okay, look at it this way: As humans, we have every right to politely disagree with or not share someone else’s opinion. This is a passive stance. It’s not hurting anybody and it’s entirely defensible. You like all-natural peanut butter? Great! I don’t. I think it’s slimy and gross. No harm, no foul.
But say you are a friend of mine who sells all-natural, homemade peanut butter and you keep inviting me to “peanut butter parties” with sad little jars of brown goop stacked all over the kitchen counter and I’m feeling pressured to buy it for no other reason than to shut you up.
This is a watershed moment. If I don’t give a fuck about all-natural peanut butter, why in God’s name would I spend my hard-earned money to acquire it?
I’ll tell you why: It’s because I just envisioned myself saying, Get away from me with that hippie shit, you weirdo, which would totally hurt your feelings. And I don’t want to hurt your feelings, so I’m about to give you twenty dollars in exchange for eight ounces of gunk that looks like it was masticated by a diseased elephant and then spit back out into a mason jar?
Nope, nope, nope.
Instead, I need to tell you—honestly and politely—that I don’t share your opinion that all-natural peanut butter is something I want to put in my mouth. Thus implying that I won’t be purchasing any tonight. Or ever.
Do you see what I’m getting at? I give a fuck about your feelings, because you are my friend (annoying peanut butter–hawking notwithstanding), but I don’t have to give a fuck what your opinion is about my [dis]taste for all-natural peanut butter. It’s no skin off my teeth if you walk away convinced that my arteries are unnecessarily clogged by trans–fatty acids because I prefer a little hydrogenated vegetable oil in my sandwich. They are my arteries, after all. So in not giving my fuck to your peanut butter, I make it about a difference of opinion.
You can sidestep the prospect of hurt feelings entirely when you view your conflict through the lens of simple, emotionless opinion.
NotSorry is all about simple, emotionless opinions.
However, there are many ways to skin a cat! (Eww.) And if your difference of opinion with a friend reflects a difference in core values, you might want to handle it with a little less honesty and an extra dose of polite. Saying you don’t believe in the health benefits of organic nut spread is a little different than saying you don’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, or a free Palestine, or that the New England Patriots are dirty rotten cheaters.
In scenarios like these, when you don’t give a fuck about the matter at hand but you also don’t want to get into a fistfight or be put on a TSA no-fly list, all you really need to do is invoke the concept of opinions and leave it at that.
Say you’re a parent, and you’re always surrounded by people who have opinions about the way you raise your children. You probably have opinions about the way they raise theirs too, but the difference is, you keep your mouth shut about it. Anyway, parenting is hard work and people love their children unconditionally and it requires a lot of energy on your part to toe the line between cordial acceptance and seething indignation over this never-ending onslaught of unsolicited advice, which tends to be closely tied to your and other people’s values and, therefore, feelings.
Then one day you’re at the playground and the topic of your children sleeping in the Family Bed comes up. You’re on one side of the debate (it doesn’t matter which!) and a fellow parent, we’ll call her Stacey, is on the other.
You don’t want Stacey to think you’re a bad parent for not agreeing with her over how long a kid should be able to wriggle his way under the covers and further retard Mom and Dad’s post-baby boning schedule. And whichever side you’re on, you don’t want to actively offend Stacey in your disagreement, or your own child might be relegated to wandering the playground with a scarlet A for “Asshole’s Kid” on his overalls.
Until today, you probably mustered a nod and smile. Maybe you even spent twenty fucking minutes listening to Stacey go on and on about the gall of some parents to not do everything the way she thinks it should be done. And this act of passive acceptance—not to mention twenty minutes’ worth of fucks given—is eating you up inside like a gang of termites at a log party.
You need some life-changing magic, stat!
So the next time this type of thing comes up, just gaze calmly at Stacey, shrug your shoulders, and say, “I know, I know, everybody has an opinion!” Then change the subject to neutral territory, like whether George Clooney is getting hotter with age. (He is not. Peak GC hotness = Facts of Life –era GC.)
You’ve implied that Stacey’s opinion is not the only one that exists, but you have given no fucks accepting or actively debating it. You didn’t assault her values/hurt her feelings in the process, so you’re neither being an asshole nor looking like one. You were honest and polite, and you can walk away secure in the knowledge that you don’t give a fuck about what Stacey thinks and she can’t fault you for anything you said.
What does that make you? NOT SORRY.
To review: If your fuck-giving actively affects someone else (such as declining to purchase a friend’s homemade peanut butter, or passing judgment on someone’s parenting choices), be honest and polite about your decision, try to make it about a difference of opinion, and 99 percent of the time, all will be well.
But if your fuck-giving affects you and only you (such as not getting all tarted up just to go to the grocery store), then why should you care about what other people think? Let them have their opinions about your yoga pants and Ani DiFranco T-shirt; you’re comfortable and you won’t get hit on by the squirrelly checkout guy.
And if it’s somewhere in between? Well, then you really need this book!
It may take a little getting used to, but you must stop giving a fuck about what other people think.
Making a Fuck Budget
You know how satisfying it is when you spend a few months saving up for something you really want to buy, and then you go to the store and you have the money in hand and you walk out with a new snowboard or whatever?
In that moment, you’re probably not giving a second thought to the things that you sacrificed over the past hundred days in order to accumulate the dollars necessary to pay for that snowboard. But you did sacrifice. Maybe you went without your Dunkin’ Donuts Angus Steak and Egg Sandwich every day for three months. Or maybe you took on more hours at Dunkin’ Donuts to make extra cash (thereby sacrificing free time). Either way, you had a goal—to save the cost of the snowboard—and you stuck to a budget relative to how much money you had to save and/or how many hours you had to work to achieve your goal.
I suggest you implement a budget for your fucks.
What if, instead of an in-the-moment existential crisis over whether you should just buy the goddamn peanut butter to avoid hurting your friend’s feelings, you simply thought of it as a line item on your Fuck Budget?
One twenty-dollar jar of all-natural peanut butter purchased = one fuck given.
And giving your fuck to all-natural peanut butter means you have one less fuck to give to something equivalent—such as a twenty-dollar cab ride home from the Peanut Butter Nazi’s party (so you don’t have to endure the additional aggravation of public transportation). Or twenty dollars toward your snowboard. Or your rent.
That fuck is starting to seem more precious, isn’t it?
Of course, not everything is about money. There are a lot of fucks that impose on your time or energy, if not your wallet. But you can budget your time and energy just as easily as you can budget your Benjamins.
For example, say you have a child whose peers’ parents routinely bake homemade cookies for class fund-raisers. Cookies with little icing smiley faces and a separate batch of gluten-free ones for the pussies. Well, maybe you have neither the TIME nor the ENERGY to bake homemade cookies. And maybe you do have twenty dollars but you’re worried about what the other parents will think if you contribute store-bought Oreos to the bake sale.
You see where I’m going with this, right?
You need to (a) stop worrying about what other people think and (b) budget your fucks accordingly. No time and no energy? Oreos it is!
Too often, we allocate our fucks without a goal in sight. We’re in the moment, saying yes, making plans, agreeing to spend a weekend in Vancouver before realizing, Uh-oh, I didn’t think this through. In order to maximize your potential for happiness, you need to consider outcomes before committing to giving your fucks. Your time, energy, and/or money spent should result in greater joy for you. If it is going to result in annoy, you don’t want to be halfway to Canada before you figure that out. Stop. Calculate. And maybe don’t give that fuck.
What about people who can’t stop giving a fuck about you not giving a fuck?
We all know these people. You can be as honest and polite as the day is long and they just don’t get it. They can’t stop themselves from arguing with you, coaxing you, and trying to change your mind. Whatever it is that you don’t give a fuck about, it is so important to them that they can’t accept your difference of opinion.
It could be anything from SEC football to improvisational jazz to the fact that you don’t participate in your family’s religious rituals. They won’t be swayed by honesty or politeness. These people are begging for confrontation. IT’S LIKE THEY WANT THEIR FEELINGS HURT.
In cases like these, you have to consider the long-term drain on your Fuck Budget. It may actually be beneficial to be/look like a bad person if it means you can put an end to this conversation once and for all. Hey, if somebody has to tell them to fuck off, it might as well be you.
In summation
The life-changing magic of not giving a fuck is all about prioritizing. Joy over annoy. Choice over obligation. Opinions vs. feelings. Sticking to a budget. Eyes on the prize.
Let’s review the basics—the tools and processes for Deciding Whether or Not to Give a Fuck so you can proceed to Give or Not Give a Fuck:
• Does the fuck you’re about to give (or not give) affect only you? Or others?
• If the former, you are way ahead of the game!
• If the latter, you must first stop giving a fuck about what other people think, before you can move on to not giving a fuck about the matter at hand.
• In order to do that, consider their opinions separately from their feelings.
• Don’t be an asshole.
• Now consult your Fuck Budget: What is that fuck worth to you? Can you afford it?
• If the answer is yes, then by all means, go for it! But if the answer is no, proceed in an honest and polite fashion toward not giving a fuck and being 100 percent, bona fide NotSorry.
In case you’re one of those visual learners, here is a flowchart for determining whether you should give a fuck. Feel free to refer back to it as you read on.
• Walk you through the mental clutter you’ll soon be discarding
• Teach you to pre-sort your fucks for confident, efficient decision-making
• Offer my own sample starter list of Ten Things About Which I, Personally, Do Not Give a Fuck
• Show you various strategies to implement Step 2 (not giving a fuck)
• And help you identify the things you do give a fuck about, all of which will allow you to achieve minimal stress, maximum happiness, and a whole lotta life-changing magic.
But for now, one last drill to get you in the zone…
A visualization exercise
Sit down. Relax.
I want you to take a minute and do a free-form visualization of all the things that you currently feel pressured—by friends, family, society, or even your own twisted sense of obligation—to give a fuck about.
These could include, but are not limited to: matching your belt to your handbag, LinkedIn, eating local, hot yoga, paleo diets, the Harry Potter books, Kombucha, “trending,” voting in the primaries, podcasts, ponchos-as-fashion, the Ballet, Bret Easton Ellis, hashtags, fair-trade coffee, the Cloud, other people’s children, sanctimonious Christians, understanding China’s economy, #catsofinstagram, The Voice, your father’s new wife, and/or Burning Man.
Felling a tad ill, are you? Jittery, nauseous, anxious? Pissed off?
Good, then it’s working.
Now visualize how happy and carefree you would be if you stopped giving all those fucks.
Hot yoga? Don’t give a downward fuck!
The Cloud? Fucks not found.
And #catsofinstagram? Sorry, you’re all outta fucks, meow.
Doesn’t that feel so much better? I’m telling you, the moment you decide to stop giving a fuck is the moment you start living your best life.
With that in mind, let’s move on to Step 1 in the NotSorry Method: Deciding not to give a fuck.