How to Not Give a Fuck

Some articles teach you how to not give a fuck. I’ll do that, plus I’ll tell you exactly what to not give a fuck about.

People giving a fuck is the main reason why we’re so stuck as a society.

There’s just so much repressed energy. I’ve often talked about this passive-aggressive odorless cultural gas that wafts through the air because people are way too preoccupied with the wrong things.

All of these preoccupations are to avoid looking in the mirror and brutally assessing your life. That’s it.

Before we get into a short list of things you shouldn’t give a fuck about, let’s look at some tips for how to not give a fuck.

How to Not Give a Fuck 101

You can never fully learn how to not give a fuck because you’ll always, to a degree, give a fuck. I’ve learned how to not give a fuck as much as I used to by continuing to understand how much I’m giving up by giving a fuck about things that don’t matter.

Some of my favorite mental frameworks for giving less fucks are:

• Mortality: I think about dying every single day because it helps me understand what matters and what doesn’t. I look at the way I’m spending my day and ask myself if this is how I want to spend my finite amount of time on the planet.
• Old-age: I think about the most common regrets people have late in life — lack of courage to be themselves, working too hard on the wrong things, failing to express their feelings out of fear, losing touch with friends, not allowing themselves to be happy (fear of change)
• Regret minimalization framework: Jeff Bezos coined this phrase after he took a risk on starting Amazon instead of staying at his cushy finance job. “I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried.”
• This Marcus Aurelius quote: “You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes, the approval of people who despise themselves.”
• The person you could’ve become: I visualize reaching the end of my life and getting to meet the person I could have become had I not let fear and self-doubt get in my way. I aim to make those two people as identical as possible.

You know the gist of what it takes to not give a fuck. You just refrain from giving said fucks. Easier said than done, but it’s worth a try. Let’s take a look at some of the things you shouldn’t give a fuck about.

Energy Harvesting Events

I learned this phrase from this Tweet and it was the perfect way to describe the media landscape.

Every time things get a bit quiet, an event happens. Then, the media vultures swarm and try to steal your energy by getting you emotionally riled up. We’ve seen this happen time and time again from co-vid to Ukraine to school shootings to now Roe vs. Wade.

I don’t give a fuck about any of those events. You can get mad at me for it if you want, but I’m no longer making myself care about things I don’t care about. I know the other people care about them. I know they’re important.

Of course, I know they impact and harm people’s lives, but I just don’t care enough on a level to get involved in the media shit storms designed to steal your energy and keep you distracted. I sound crass, but I’m a realist.

There are so many tragic, horrific, and awful things that happen all around the world, 24/7.

Don’t misread this.

Just because we live in the West doesn’t mean we don’t have our own forms of oppression. Of course, we do. But perspective is important. And the fact that there are so many different causes to champion means I just don’t have time to champion all of them, so I’m not going to.

It’s not apathy. Nor is it me saying these events don’t emotionally impact me because they do. It’s saying that the way people participate in trying to solve these problems is almost always a counterproductive waste of time — shouting into the void on social media to people who aren’t listening to them.

You have to get out of the political media machine spin cycle it’s ruining your mind.

This One Will be Controversial But I’ll Say It Anyway

Stop giving a fuck about your own feelings.

Have you ever considered that you don’t have to let your feelings dictate your actions? A lot of people have the faulty assumption that they have to feel a certain way before they can do something, e.g., they have to be confident before putting themselves out there.

We look at our feelings as things that need to be fixed. You have anxiety. Cool. Got it. What’s wrong with having anxiety? Why do you need to fix your anxiety?

Life gives you so many things to be anxious about that it would be weird to not have anxiety. When I feel anxious about something I just tell myself “ok, I feel anxious about this, but can I still move forward”? The answer isn’t always yes, but it’s important to question myself.

Maybe I can still act

Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the way I feel

Maybe I don’t need to fix this at all

Far too many people are preoccupied with being happy and feeling good as if these are emotional states you’re entitled to just because you exist. Are they? I don’t know. I don’t concern myself with whether or not I’m happy. Feeling good isn’t a primary concern of mine.

Instead, I focus on creating a lifestyle where I do the things I know I’m supposed to do regardless of the way I feel. This flies in the face of the zeitgeist that says you must take a break for self-care any time your mood falls a centimeter below a certain threshold.

Fuck your feelings.

The Thing We’re All Afraid of (But Shouldn’t Be)

I heard this audio clip from Kobe Bryant the other day. He said that self-doubt didn’t make sense to him. You try to achieve a certain outcome. You either succeed or you fail.

If you win, you gotta wake up and start the journey all over again

If you lose, it sucks, but you gotta wake up and start the journey all over again

Instead of taking failure personally, I choose to look at life through the lens of course correction. Failure just teaches me what doesn’t work. So, I can eliminate it from my process.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes ever:

My characterization of a loser is someone who, after making a mistake, doesn’t introspect, doesn’t exploit it, feels embarrassed and defensive rather than enriched with a new piece of information, and tries to explain why he made the mistake rather than moving on. These types often consider themselves the “victims” of some large plot, a bad boss, or bad weather.

I’m still afraid to fail. Rejection still hurts. Embarrassment still sends shockwaves through my body and makes my heart sink into my stomach. But I’ve taught myself to let go of these feelings much more quickly. I’ve trained myself to bounce back faster.

You never fully stop giving a fuck. But you can train yourself to give less fucks than you used to and shorten the duration with which you give a fuck about things that don’t matter.

You Really Shouldn’t Give a Fuck About This

Another favorite quote of mine:

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

Think of how much of your life is spent doing trivial errands and busy work. Add work on top of that. Throw in a dash of mindless entertainment and distraction and you have a recipe for your life where you spend almost none of your time actually living.

One of my favorite self-help gurus Jim Rohn calls this ‘majoring in minor things.’

Facing the truth about your life is hard. Pursuing a long-term goal that requires years of delayed gratification is hard. Most people are active, but they never get anything of consequence done.

When I hear someone call themselves ‘busy,’ I know I’m talking to someone who gets almost zero important work done. If you feel busy, it’s because you say yes to unimportant shit far too often.

I’m positive at least 50 percent of the activities you do on a weekly basis could be cut from your life and it wouldn’t make a difference. In fact, you’d be more productive. I focus on removing anything in my life that doesn’t move me closer to the life I want to live.

If I can afford to, I delegate it. Often, I stop doing ‘it’ altogether.

Your “Grand Vision”

I don’t set goals anymore.

I don’t care how much money I make over a lifetime. Yes, I want to make a lot of money, but not some specific number, and all of it is a byproduct of how well I run my business.

I went from zero readers to millions and being dead broke to having a multi-six-figure business. As cliche as it sounds, the destination didn’t matter as much as the journey. The process of getting better is the point.

I used to wonder why wealthy entrepreneurs kept building their businesses well after they needed the money. I get it now. It’s about the game, the process, the strategies, the tweaks, the improvement.

Stop giving a fuck about the destination altogether.

Stop telling yourself “I’ll be happy when…”

Getting what you want doesn’t make you happy. The person you become in the process of getting what you want does. Focus on the process itself more than anything else and everything good in your life will just happen as a byproduct.

You can change your entire life, right now, simply by giving your best effort today. If you do that you already won. And your prize is getting to do it again tomorrow.

There is no future. There’s just now.

Just Ask Yourself This Question

These days, as a lens for decision making, I just ask myself:

Should I give a fuck about this?

I’ll have a snap initial reaction where I do give a fuck, but then I stop, pause, and reflect on whether or not it’s worth my time to care. Nine times out of ten, when I stop to think about it. It isn’t.

I’ve said a bunch of controversial statements that probably pissed some of you off, but I don’t give a fuck. This is my truth and if it doesn’t fit your definition of what like should look like then…why would you give a fuck?

If you were on your path and happened to disagree with what I said, you’d breeze right by this post and keep doing your thing.

If you have the urge to pick a fight with me, you’re letting me live rent-free in your head.

Don’t let anyone, including me, toy with your head and steal your energy.

Stop giving a fuck about everything except the things you know you’re truly supposed to do.