The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k

by Sarah Knight

You should give a fuck if something — be it human, inanimate, or conceptual — does not annoy and does bring you happiness.

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.

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

stop giving all of your fucks to all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons.

You have no control over what other people 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 behaviour with regard to their feelings, not their opinions.

don’t have to give a fuck about what other people think when it comes to their opinions.

As humans, we have every right to politely disagree with or not share someone else’s opinion.

Deciding you don’t give a fuck about something is extremely liberating.

you can only control how WELL you do your job, and how MUCH time and energy you put into it to minimize annoy and maximize happiness.

The company mission statement. Have you heard of the Infinite Monkey theorem? They used it on an episode of The Simpsons where Mr Burns has a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters, the idea being that if given enough time, the monkeys could produce the works of Dickens. This is essentially how company mission statements are created, and why you need not give a fuck about memorizing or adhering to them. They are the products of untold man-hours of “brainstorming” and “focus-grouping”

resulting in the blandest, most generalized, least-potentially-offensive, frequently asinine copy that could have been created by any group of monkeys in any boardroom in the world.

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people that they don’t like.”

The mental-health benefits of not giving a fuck are vast and never-ending.