A Fuck Not Given is Something Gained
Your 2024 mantra: comin' in hot!
My favorite fucklings,
Some of you have been listening to me bang this drum for nigh on seven years; some have only just discovered my NFG universe via Substack in the last couple of months. Either way, I hope my tips and strategies for living your best life will carry you into 2024 and beyond, but if you take away just one thing from our time together, please make it this:
A fuck not given is something gained.
For the newbies in the room (or anyone who could use a refresher), allow me to explain what “giving a fuck” means in the context of my work. I think of it in two ways:
The figurative sense of caring about someone or something
The literal sense of giving a fuck to someone or something, in the form of your time, energy, and/or money.
In the first case, your fuck-giving potential has no bounds. You can care about so much, every day, all the time! But in the second case, it pays to remember this:
The number of fucks YOU personally have to give—in the form of your time, energy, and/or money—is a finite and precious commodity.
Time? I hate to break it to you, but you’re running out of it as we speak.
Energy? You may have deeper reserves than the average bear, but eventually (or until Jeff Bezos figures out how to hook our brains up to Wi-Fi) we all need to rest.
Money? Better start setting some aside—that Amazon MindMeld™ Human Charging Pod won’t come cheap.
In The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck, I refer to these resources as your “fuck bucks” and the process of saving/spending them as “making a Fuck Budget.”
As with a regular ol’ budget, every allocation of fuck bucks that you put toward one thing is less that you have to spend on another.
This is where “something gained” comes into play.
Because although it makes for snappy marketing copy and a popular hashtag, “no fucks given”—as in zero, zilch, nothing cared about and nothing to show for it—isn’t really the goal here.
The goal is to give fewer, better, and more intentional fucks to people and things you do care about. In other words: to make the most of your limited and precious resources in service to the life you well and truly want to live.
“Something gained” begins with that time, energy, and/or money that you’ve snatched back from the jaws of doing stuff you don’t want to do with people you don’t really like.
For example, by not going to an after-work drinks thing that you have no interest in, you gain two hours of time—not to mention saving $20 you might have spent on two overpriced cocktails. ($40 if you live in New York, San Francisco, or London. Maybe $50. Ouch.)
Once you’ve regained those resources, you have the opportunity to put them toward something else that brings you pleasure, peace, a renewed sense of purpose, and more. Something you would not have had the time, energy, or money to pursue if you’d wasted your Fuck Budget on annoying shit.
To wit:
By not allowing yourself to get sucked into pointless, enervating fights on Twitter/X, you GAIN time to do stuff that actually makes you feel good—such as scrolling soothing cat videos on TikTok, finding a rare Pokémon in the wild, or taking a hula-hoop lesson.
By refusing to interact any longer with a toxic friend or family member, you RECLAIM mental energy that can instead be spent maintaining your most valued relationships.
By cancelling your gym membership in the New Year (because, let’s face it, you simply do not give a fuck about getting buff), you SAVE funds that could be put toward feeding your pleasure reading habit, hosting a weekly pizza party, or even contributing to a retirement account, if you want to get all “responsible” about it.
In any event, the key to giving fewer, better, and more intentional fucks lies in making these calculations ahead of time.
Start sketching out that 2024 Fuck Budget today, is what I’m saying.
And finally, if you’re here now, it means you’ve spent a few of your precious fuck bucks on me in these last few months of 2023. Thank you!
I appreciate each and every minute you’ve devoted to reading my posts and sharing with your friends, and of course any actual bucks you may have put toward a paid subscription. I sincerely hope you feel it was a good investment of your time, energy, and/or money, and I look forward to serving up more INSPIRATION and LIBERATION to your inbox in 2024.
Here’s wishing you a happy and healthy New Year, and I’ll see you on the flipside…
Sarah
Looking for simple, practical strategies for living your best life? I write about organization and motivation, managing anxiety and solving problems, setting and enforcing boundaries, building confidence, banishing guilt, and more.
Come for the naughty words and stay for the truly life-changing advice!
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A bit about me: I spent 15 years as a book editor in NYC before quitting that career to pursue a freelance life (a decision that involved a lot of red wine and a lot of tears). In 2015 I had the idea for my first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck. And people loved it, so I kept writing! Today my sweary self-help series includes Get Your Shit Together, Calm the Fuck Down, Grow the Fuck Up, and more, with 3 million copies in print all over the world.
You can also find me on Instagram, where my content skews tropical (in addition to quitting my job, I quit New York entirely and moved to a small fishing village in the Dominican Republic), plus food, cocktails, travel, and cats. So many cats.
I love this... it's like a Treasury of Fucks... and you're figuring out your own personal fuckonomics. :)
I almost always laugh with your posts but this one is so to the point. Thank you.