The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck
Posted on October 28, 2021
Newly I discovered one of the most entertaining TEDx Talks I watched so far: “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck” by Sarah Knight. In her TEDx Talk Sarah shares a very important lesson she learned by chance and she reveals the secret to inner satisfaction and joy in our life.
What is the TED Talk about?
The premise is, that we all have a limited amount of time, energy and money, or as Sarah calls it, a limited “F*ck Budget”. It is therefore very important to know what exactly we spend our F#ck Budget on.
When you think of a minimalism lifestyle, it’s about decluttering your life from unnecessary things and owning only what you really need.
When physical items are involved, the process is easy. For example, you use the “decluttering after a move” method: you pack all the items you own into moving boxes and whenever you need an item, you take it out of the box. After a few weeks – or months -, you’ll quickly realize which items remained in the boxes and you can safely dispose of, sell or give away.
But according to Sarah, disposing of superfluous items alone is not enough!
So what if we could apply the decluttering idea to also get rid of all our daily tasks, obligations, relationships, worries etc., in order to only keep what is important to us and brings real joy in our lives?
Concerning this matter, Sarah has discovered a simple method, a kind of mental clear-out she calls “Not Sorry Method”.
Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck – Not Sorry Method
Step 1: Find out what you don’t care about in your life, i.e. all the things you “don’t give a f*ck” about.
Let’s say all your colleagues binged Money Heist – meh! -, Game of Thrones – watched it till the end -, the Olympic Games or the soccer World Cup – both boring beyond belief – and expect you to watch all the episodes/matches too, so you can join in the conversation at lunch. But now you realize you are not interested in the show/the sport event at all. Here step 2 comes in.
Step 2: Don’t waste any of your f*cks on anything that doesn’t interest you.
In the example, this simply means saying “no” to Money Heist, Game of Thrones, the Olympic Games or the soccer World Cup. If you really don’t care, why waste your precious time watching all the episodes or Olympic discipline, waste energy worrying about what might happen in the next episode or what soccer team will reach the finals, or waste money buying t-shirts, DVDs, pay-tv subscriptions etc.?
The important message is: you don’t have to be sorry if you say no to something you don’t like, to an invitation to a party you don’t want to go to or anything else. After all, you can openly admit that you are not interested or that you simply don’t want to.
Always be fair and not rude, because others have very different interests and believe you share them too. And if you need any advice on how to overcome your limiting beliefs, I wrote this article that will interest you.
Sarah also wrote this book*: Life Changing Magic Of Not Giving A F**K on the topic. The problem nice people and conformists suffer from is that they haven’t learned to say no, to live your own life and to stop fulfilling the desires and wishes others have. Above all, you have to stop thinking about what other people think about you.
The topic of saying no is important, many people spend most of their time doing things they neither want nor need to do, wasting their time, energy and often also money – not to mention the negative feelings they develop doing all these things.
This book really helped me to take a closer look at my own life and to change it. The advice she gives is presented in a very practical way. Admittedly, I also had to read the whole book with mixed feelings, as the language contains many scatological allegories.
The bottom line
By consistently reducing what doesn’t interest you, you will have more time, energy and money – more “F*ck Bucks”, as Sarah says – for what interests you and brings you joy.
There is no need for “using money you haven’t earned to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like”.
We humans tend to act to impress others, sometimes we even think it is expected. But this is your life, your time, your energy and your money. So use it for what is important to you and don’t feel guilty if you are actually consistent.
Who is Sarah Knight
Sarah herself has climbed the career ladder over the years and has been a managing editor for New York City’s top publishing houses. Her problem, however, was that she was unhappy in her situation; so unhappy that it was hard for her to get up every day and go to work. Quitting her job, which certainly wasn’t easy, gave her the opportunity to realign herself and use her time, energy and money for what she enjoys – that still includes work, but in a different way.
Be sure to check out the video of her TED Talk. It’s worth it and really entertaining! Anyway, I learned something very important and that’s why I took the time to write this post.
My best advice #1: Always think long-term!
Posted on October 1, 2021
With this new blog posts series, I want to share with you thoughts and experiences I had in the last years that are not related to travel or photography but that could actually be interesting for you.
The short summary of this article: Long-term thinking – Why it was and is so important for my life! When you think long-term and act accordingly, a fulfilling life is rather easy to achieve.
Why all this?
Over time, I have collected a lot of advice, much of which I use for myself on a daily basis and has served me well.
Many of these tips, wisdoms, basic rules, etc. sound quite simple at first glance and you may even already know them. However, in the past I was used to ignore them after having picked them up somewhere. This was especially true when I didn’t have a personal connection and haven’t seen the results with my own eyes.
For this reason, in this article series I not only want to document the tips and advice for myself, but also pass them on to you.
The pieces of advice I will tell you about have often come from successful people I have had the privilege to meet – a few times – or I have read about. Most of these people were not only successful businessmen or businesswomen, but also mentors, people who built their own businesses after being employed for their entire life, real estate investors, supervisors and colleagues with decades of professional and life experience.
Nowadays I take advice very seriously, even if it doesn’t come from direct acquaintances, because I now know how much knowledge from personalities like Warren Buffett, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Mark Cuban and many more is available to you for free and how much this knowledge could change your life and mine.
And when I write “could,” it is on purpose, because one of the biggest keys to success doesn’t lie in theory but in action and implementation.
But first things first, let’s get to my first best advice.
My best advice #1 – Always think long-term!
I would like to start with a piece of advice from someone I unfortunately do not know personally (yet), Gary Vaynerchuk.
Some biographic information about him: He is an active entrepreneur from the US America who has increased his family’s wine business annual sales from $3 million to $60 million in just a few years and has become well-known through his digital media company and his shows on social media. His YouTube videos are absolutely recommended.
“Unless you’re gonna die, you should always play long-term!”
Gary Vaynerchuk
In other words, unless you’re going to die soon – which you hopefully won’t! -, you should always think long-term and act accordingly.
According to Gary, 99% of people want to see short-term results. Success must come to them as quickly as possible, everything else is a waste of time. The main reason for this behavior is that we humans are wired to think that consumption today is better than consumption tomorrow. This phenomenon is know as temporal discounting and its proliferation took place with the beginning of the industrial age.(Galor & Özak, 2016)
In the course of his career, however, Gary has repeatedly observed that the 1% who think long-term and have the necessary patience and discipline are more successful than the remaining 99%.
We [Bezos and Amazon shareholders] can’t realize our potential as people or as companies unless we plan for the long term.
Jeff Bezos
This is what he wrote in a letter to Amazon shareholders in 1997. Every subsequent year, Bezos has ended shareholder letters by attaching the original 1997 essay with a reminder of the importance of thinking long term. And every year, he is proven right.
The following examples show that Gary and Jeff are not only right, but that this advice can be applied to pretty much all situations in life.
Shares
The “yield triangle” of the German Stock Institute is the best example of how it pays off in the stock market to think long-term. (Being in Germany and studying the German market, I will mostly propose you examples with reference to Germany or Europe, but the concept applies worldwide.)
Over a period of 50 years, the institute calculated what the respective annual return would have been if one had invested in the German DAX index, consisting of the 30 largest German companies, at a predetermined time and held the portfolio for at least 1 year to a maximum of 50 years.
While with an investment horizon of 15 years the worst return would still be +2.3% p.a. – covering at least the annual inflation, and the best +15.4% p.a. – so one has made money despite several major crises – with an investment horizon of only 5 years the worst result is -9.4% p.a. and the best +29.8% p.a.
You can find the graphic here.
Of course, a higher return is often achievable in the short term. However, the underlying risk cannot be controlled, so the probability of losing money is higher then when investing long-term.
With a long-term investment horizon, short-term fluctuations are not relevant as long as the portfolio is well diversified. So if you had invested in the DAX in 1993, for example, and survived the dotcom bubble and sold in 2008 shortly after the financial crisis, you would still have been rewarded with an annual return of +5.1%. Not bad!
In addition, a long-term investor is not forced to sell. If the same investor who had invested in 1993 had held his portfolio for up to 8 more years till 2016, even +7.5% p.a. would have been possible.
In figures: With an investment of €10,000 in 1993, after 15 years and after the financial crisis the total value in 2008 would be about €21,000. In 2013, after 20 years and an average return of 7.5% p.a., the total would have been as much as €42,480 – and this despite several market crises.
Real estate
The situation of real estate as a capital investment is similar to the precedent example, whereby additional criteria are added here.
Real revenue drivers such as rising rents or the increasing value of the property itself can usually only be realized in the long term. In addition, keep in mind that 10% or more of the purchase price is due in incidental costs. This means that the property must first increase its value by 10% or generate corresponding income before you get into the black.
However, if you invest for the long term and hold the property for at least 10 years, you will not only be rewarded for your patience every month, but will also be exempt from capital gains tax when you sell it – assumed it is privately owned by you).
SportS, friends, relationships
I don’t have to tell you that long-term thinking pays off not only in investments. (But I still do, I know…)
When it comes to getting better at soccer, building muscle mass or losing weight, it’s not enough to play with a ball for a single day, to spend one day in the gym or to eat vegetables for one meal. Success lies in continuously pursuing your goal and not succumbing to a torn muscle on the first day. Even if the short-term effect will not always be visible, the result will be and it will last for long. The same principle applies for blogging, but also in my professional life.
Contacts in one’s own network or even relationships are no different. If you want to get the best for yourself in the short term, you may be able to take advantage of other persons in the first round, but in the long term you will destroy valuable relationships. Also in this case it is extremely important to build long-term and healthy partnerships, because the closer these persons are to you, it is either a win-win or a lose-lose situation. We all are in the same boat.
So, really take this advice to heart. It’s one of the basic attitudes I get up every day with and that will make my life easier in the long run.
Galor, Oded; Özak, Ömer (2016). “The Agricultural Origins of Time Preference”. American Economic Review. 106 (10): 3064–3103. URL