My Thoughts on The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck approaches self-help through the lens of humility and self-awareness, however the book at times seems to lack its own self-awareness and becomes a victim of its own marketing.

The book starts off by telling you how different it is than other self-help books because it won’t pull any punches and it will insert swear words in its pages, but the reality is most of the advice in the first few chapters of the book really isn’t that new if you’re familiar with the genre. Also, the swearing which the book brands itself on doesn’t come off as effortless as Navy sailor does it but forced as a 13-year-old on Xbox Live would do it. An obvious victim of its own marketing, the loud orange book cover seems to dictate the first half of the book. Swears, gross anecdotes, and meaningless meanness are shoe horned into generic advice you’d receive in pretty much any book. This isn’t helped by the author telling you over and over again that you won’t see this in other books, when arguably Gary Vaynerchuck’s bibliography does the same sweary self-help schtick in a much more authentic way.

The book is also way too long, often chapters feel like they would’ve been blog posts but needed to be padded to meet an adequate book length. Repeating points over and over again and injecting third party stories that can take up pages and only loosely relate to the point he’s making. What’s truly unfortunate is that I feel most readers won’t get to experience the last 3 chapters of the book. These chapters are where the author seems to sober up, cut back on the gimmicks and give a truly self-reflective personal take on how to improve yourself, your relationships, and even face death. The last two chapters in particular felt almost as if they were written by a completely different author, someone who was genuinely trying to relate to people and solve their problems instead of being a dismissive prick like in earlier chapters.

Overall, I, while I don’t think the hype around this book, is worth the cost. This is an airplane book, a fun 4–5 hour 200 page read that contains some interesting lessons if you can get past the gimmick. I probably won’t read it again, and neither will you. However, it sure is a fun conversation starter on any coffee table.