The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by, Mark Manson
March Book Club Discussion
When we posted a list of books to vote on for our book club, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by, Mark Manson was the top voted for book! I think almost every single person who voted selected this book. I was pretty excited for it as I had been wanting to read it for awhile, but I ended up having a love-hate relationship with it. I really hated the first few chapters and probably would’ve stopped reading it altogether had I been reading it on my own. Since I was reading it for the sake of the book club, I pushed through and I did end up liking it. Bassam listened to the book on audio and he really liked it from the beginning, he just found the middle to be a bit repetitive.
The whole concept of the book is that everyone has limited fucks to give in their life and so they should spend their fucks on something that is worthwhile to them. Many of the concepts I recognized as derived from ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a branch of psychology derived from behavior analysis. The basic premise of ACT is to accept anything negative that comes your way without trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist and continuing to act in accordance with your values. Manson presents this information in a no BS way (as you can see by the title of the book) and packages up easily attainable pieces of wisdom and mini stories as examples. Being the behavior analysis nerd I am, I loved all this and nodded along in agreement for the most of the book, highlighting something on almost every page.
Let’s dive into the discussion!
Discussion Questions
We’ll be discussing these questions on Instagram Live on 3/27 at 6:30pm PST. To join in, leave a comment below with your answers to one, a few, or all of these questions.
1. What did you think about the book overall? Did you enjoy reading it? Would you recommend it?
2. What were your favorite concepts?
3. Where there any concepts you resisted against?
4. What are your values / what do you choose to give a fuck about?
5. Is there anything you are choosing to let go off / not give a fuck about after reading this book?
6. How do you deal with the feedback loop from hell?
6. Pg. 40 Is there anything you are striving for that you actually enjoy the process and the struggle? Is there anything in life you’ve tried to strive for but then realized you didn’t actually enjoy the process / you only wanted it for the reward?
7. Pg. 58-60 Mason talks about how only extremes catch our attention, which is why they are so prevalent in the media, as well as how being average is looked upon as failure. Have you noticed is? How do you think our society can work to shift away from this mindset?
8. Pg. 78 Think back to the examples of Mustaine vs. Metallica and Pete Best vs. the Beatles. Have you ever had a similar thing happen? Who could you relate more to: Mustaine or Best?
9. Pg. 175 What did you think of Manson’s take on complete honesty in a relationship, even if it might hurt the other person’s feelings?
10. What’s your metric of success?
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