The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck: what I actually took from it

I read this book a few years back, didn't think much of it at first, then came back to my highlights recently and realised how much of it had quietly stuck. Not the catchy title. The actual ideas underneath it.

Here are the 10 concepts I keep coming back to, and how they've changed the way I run my businesses and my life.

1. The backwards law: chasing happiness makes you miserable

This is the central idea in the book, and it comes from the philosopher Alan Watts. The more you chase positive experience, the less satisfied you become. Pursuing something just reinforces the fact that you don't have it. Accepting the hard stuff, on the other hand, generates the positive outcome you were after.

I see this constantly in business. The months I've stressed least about revenue have often been the months things clicked. The clients I chased hardest were rarely the ones who stayed. You can feel the principle at work even before you have language for it.

Manson frames it plainly: wanting positive experience is a negative experience. Accepting negative experience is a positive experience. That inversion changed how I approach most things.

2. Not giving a fuck isn't apathy

This is the part people misread. It doesn't mean checked out, lazy, or nihilistic. Manson is specific: not giving a fuck means being comfortable being different. It means not caring about adversity in the face of what actually matters to you.

That's a higher standard than it sounds. You need clarity about what's worth your energy, and discipline to stop reacting to the stuff that isn't. Most people have it backwards. They protect their comfort and fight for things that don't move the needle.

3. You always give a fuck about something

There is no such thing as not giving a fuck. Biology won't allow it. You are always caring about something. The question Manson is asking is: what are you choosing to care about, and is it worth it?

For a long time I gave too many fucks about clients who weren't the right fit, about approval I didn't need, about opinions from people I didn't actually respect. That's not life management. It's energy leakage. You don't notice it until you stop and look at where the hours went.

4. To stop caring about adversity, care about something bigger

Manson's second subtlety is this: you can't just decide to stop caring about the difficult stuff. The only way it works is if you have something more important to care about instead. Without an anchor, every small irritation fills the vacuum.

Running two businesses while studying for the Tax Agent course simultaneously is not comfortable. But I know what it's for. That makes most of the discomfort easy to set aside. The purpose doesn't make the hard stuff disappear. It just makes it irrelevant enough to keep moving.

5. You are always choosing what to give a fuck about

Manson's third subtlety is about ownership. Whether you realise it or not, you are choosing. The person who says "I have no choice" has made a choice. The person who says "I'm too busy to exercise" has ranked something above it. That's fine, but own it.

This is the mental habit I try to apply in business decisions. Not "I can't take that on" but "I'm choosing not to." The language matters because it keeps you in the driver's seat instead of the passenger seat.

6. Pleasure and money stop working past a point

The research on this is clear, and Manson doesn't soften it. Once basic needs are covered, extra income does almost nothing for long term satisfaction. His line is blunt: you're killing yourself working overtime and weekends for basically nothing. Not a case against ambition. A case against using money as a proxy for meaning.

I've thought about this when planning the growth of JVM Accountants and JVM Loans. Bigger isn't automatically better. More clients means more complexity, more exposure, more pressure on the team. The question worth asking is whether the growth is for something specific, or just to watch the number go up.

7. Always being right is a terrible value to build a life on

If your metric for a good life is being right, you'll spend most of your energy defending positions instead of updating them. Manson's advice is direct: assume you're ignorant and don't know a whole lot. That keeps you learning instead of defending.

This aligns with how I try to run client meetings. I'd rather ask the question and look uncertain for thirty seconds than assume I have the answer and give advice that doesn't fit the situation. Being wrong quickly is cheaper than being right slowly.

8. Constant positivity is avoidance, not health

The relentless positivity culture, the "good vibes only" mindset, is a strategy for not dealing with problems. Denying the negative doesn't eliminate it. It delays it and adds interest.

The healthiest response when something isn't working is to acknowledge it and address it directly. Pretending otherwise just makes the eventual reckoning worse. This applies to health, business performance, relationships, all of it. The honest conversation now costs less than the honest conversation in six months.

9. Good values are immediate and controllable

Manson gives a practical test. Good values are reality-based, socially constructive, and immediate and controllable. Bad values are superstitious, socially destructive, and outside your control.

Wanting to be liked by everyone fails all three. Needing to be always right fails all three. But showing up consistently, doing honest work, treating people fairly, being direct when something needs to change: those pass the test. The difference between good and bad values isn't moral, it's practical. Bad values produce outcomes you can't control. Good ones don't.

10. Being obsessed with being "right" about your life means you stop living it

This is the line I put the book down for. Many people become so obsessed with being right about their life that they never actually live it. The comfort of a consistent narrative is more appealing than the discomfort of testing it.

I've seen this with business owners who have had the same plan for five years and keep explaining why the conditions aren't right yet. The plan is fine. The conditions are always something. It never moves. The story of the plan has replaced the plan.

My review of the book

Manson writes like he's talking directly to you, which is either refreshing or irritating depending on your mood. The profanity isn't gratuitous. It matches the directness of the thinking, and the book earns it.

The ideas aren't entirely original. A lot of this echoes Stoicism and existentialism. But the framing is modern, the examples are sharp, and Manson doesn't let himself hide behind philosophy. He makes it practical.

The book is best read slowly, in chunks, not consumed in one sitting. The concepts need time to settle before they become useful. I've got more out of returning to my highlights than I did from the initial read.

If you're a business owner, a professional, or anyone who's spent time optimising things that don't actually matter, it's worth your time. Not because it tells you what to care about, but because it forces you to ask the question honestly.

How I've put it into practice

The backwards law sits in the background of most strategy conversations I have now. The values test comes up when I'm deciding what to take on and what to decline. The "always being right" trap is something I watch for in how I handle pushback from clients and colleagues.

None of it is dramatic. That's the point. You quietly stop spending energy on things that don't matter, and things get easier without you doing anything different except choosing better.