There must be some kind of rating here. Maybe later…

Done

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

by Mark Manson.

Download at amazon.

Read 2022.

It seems to me this is a shorter, a bit more rude version of “Seven habits” for millennials. I like the book. I guess it is even too short for me to unpack some of the ideas while I was listening to the audio version. I suppose I should read it again one day.

It starts with a catching concept of “giving/ not giving a f.” as proxy to the personal values.

Chapter 1. Don’t try.

Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.

Giving a fuck as a label to one’s values. About choice of the life values.

I believe that today we’re facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck sometimes. I know that sounts intellectually lazy on the surface. but I promice you, it’s a life/death sort of issue.

Chapter 2. Intro to buddhism basically. Life is pain. You have to choose your struggle. Psychological pain is a marker for what’s important for you. Like physical pain. Emotions are overrated. Happiness comes from solving problems (I noticed that:) )

Chapter 3. You are not special. Story of difficult childhood of the author. Almost all of us are very ordinary people. But around us we always have stories of something extraordinary. About virtue of simple life. The vast majority of your life is going to be boring. That is ok. That is like eating veggies is a healthy diet. ( I like the methafor)

Chapter 4. The value of suffering. Story about abandoned Japaneese partisan that continued the fight after WW2 cause he didn’t know they surrendered. He had a meaning in life and after he returned to Japan he became less happy. About virtue of self-awareness. Asking “why” until you get to the root cause. Another example of guitarrist of Metallica that was kicked out of the band and started his own band (Megadeth), became extremely popular, but he never was happy. He had wrong (bad) values. He was trying to beat metallica and prove something for them. It’s important to chose the values that come from within.

Good values are 1) reality based 2) socially constructive 3) immediate and controllable

Bad values are 1) supersitious 2) socially destructive 3) not immediate or controllable

Chapter 5. You are always choosing.

When one feels that he’s in control, he feels empowered. When the problems are being enforced against us we feel miserable. We are always responsible for our experiences. Choosing not consciously interpret events in our lives is still an interpretation. About responding to tragedies.

Victim mentality is ubiquotous today (among others thanks to the Internet).

There is no “How”. There is no answer for everybody about how to change oneself. It’s a way and it’s hard.

Chapter 6. You are wrong about everything. There is an interesting story about made up memories of sexual harrasment. (is it in the audio version?) About acting on the wrong values and being ready to acknowledge you were wrong.

Chapter 7. Failure is the way forward. Pain is part of the process. A nice story about VCR. Parents often are less advanced users of new home appliences than their kids. And often they consider knowledge about how to use a VCR as magic and their kid who knows it as a genius. But they are totally capable of learning it. They just don’t do the effort.

I can relate to this story so much. I see it everyday. And I started to see myself on the side of the “parents” more often recently

Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.

Action -> inspiration -> motivation. (not other way around)

Chapter 8. The importance of saying no. Rejection makes your life better ; Boundaries ; How to build trust ; Freedom through commitment

Funny story about Russian way of communicating. That is an interesting view of the westerner on the Russians. I don’t agree with all the conslusions. But I like that the author admits certain benefits of extreme directness of Russian culture. (I am going to use this reference to explain it maybe, haha)

Rejection often makes life easier.

About toxic relationship. (responsibility again)

Freedom through commitment. You always choose. Choosing to live in 50 countries means you choose not to live in one for a long time.

Chapter 9. … And then you die. Something beyond our selves ; The sunny side of death.

Thinking about depth helps.

other

  • Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • Learning Spark. Lightning-Fast Big Data Analysis. By Holden Karau, Andy Konwinski, Patrick Wendell, Matei Zaharia link

  • Cracking the Coding Interview link

  • Clean Code A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Robert C. Martin

  • Thinking In Java. Bruce Eckel

  • Effective Java. Joshua Bloch link

  • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • Effective STL: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of the Standard Template Library link Scott Meyers

  • Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software Erich Gamma et al.

  • C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices, Herb Sutter Andrei Alexandrescu link

  • C++: The Complete Reference, Herbert Schildt

  • Testing Dot Com, or allowance for the abuse of bugs in Internet startups Roman Savin Роман Савин - Тестирование DOT COM (in Russian)

Postponed

  • Learning Python, 5th Edition, Mark Lutz link

todo

Abandoned ?

Part

  • Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs Scott Meyers