New from Pierce Kastleton
Give a F*ck and Don’t Suck
A blunt guide to standards, follow-through, and becoming someone you can count on
The book in one sentence
The way you meet the task in front of you trains the future version of you who has to meet the next one.
I kept calling it a training problem. It was a caring problem.
Pierce Kastleton
What it is about
Pierce spent his career leading people on sales floors and service crews and kept running into the same two surprises. Some people, shown a standard once, took it further than he ever had. Others, given the same training in the same week, made mistakes so ridiculous he blamed his own teaching for months before admitting the truth: the training was identical. The difference was whether the person gave a f*ck.
This is not a book about choosing what to care about. Plenty of those exist. This is the book about what happens after you have chosen: the job you took, the person you married, the business you started, the kid, the house, the body you live in. You are in it. The only question left is how you treat it when nobody is explaining it to you.
Not giving a f*ck is a decision. Giving one is a practice. This is the practice.
Read the opening
Nine pages beat me.
My sister had read maybe nine pages of something I typed up for her, and she told me she got more from them than from every conversation we had ever had about her life. There had been a lot of those conversations. I had thought I was good at them. She did not say it to hurt me. She said it the way you tell someone their headlight is out. Just information.
I help people for a living. I have trained sales floors and service crews and walked owners through decisions that scared them. And the person I love most on this earth could not hear me until I shut up and wrote it down.
I sat with that for about a week. It did not feel good. Then I figured out why it was true, and that is this book.
But first, rocks.
I once watched a man turn picking up rocks into a personality test.
It was not supposed to be dramatic. The job was simple in the way jobs are simple when described by someone who will not personally be doing them. There was a patch of ground full of loose rocks. The rocks needed to be moved. That was the whole assignment. No ceremony. No heroic music. No drone footage of a determined man silhouetted against the sunrise with a bucket.
Just rocks.
One guy saw punishment. He grabbed whatever was nearby, bent badly, complained early, made seven trips because he never thought about where the pile should go, left the small rocks because “good enough,” and turned an hour of work into two hours of resentment, a sore back, and a small audience of people quietly deciding never to ask him for anything that mattered.
The other guy stood there for thirty seconds first. Asked where the rocks needed to end up. Got the right container. Big pieces first, then raked the small ones into piles. Worked in a pattern instead of wandering like a confused Roomba with hands. Saved his back. Left the ground clean. Finished faster, with less drama, and the dirt looked like somebody with a working brain had been there.
Same rocks. Different human.
That is the whole book in dirty shoes.
Keep reading
Now here is the part I need you to sit still for.
You already know which guy you are. Not in general. Today. On the thing you are half-doing right now. You thought of it before you finished this sentence. The email you answered in your head and never sent. The bill on the counter you have been walking past like it is furniture. The apology you keep almost making. The job you marked done with one “quick thing” still open. The person at home who has stopped asking you for things, and you have noticed, and you have not asked why.
I am not going to tell you that thing does not matter. It matters. Not because the thing is big. Because of what it is doing to you while it sits there.
Here is the argument of the whole book, and I will only say it once, because you will either feel it or you will not:
The way you meet the task in front of you is training the person who has to meet the next one.
What is inside
| Part | Reader problem | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| The argument (Chapters 1 to 4) | You know what to do and keep not doing it well. | The seven words, the floor instead of the ceiling, the small task as rehearsal, five borrowed lenses from the broom to the stop cord. |
| The practices (Chapters 5 to 11) | Fake yeses, boredom, overpromising, the last ten percent, half-finished landmines. | The yes audit, the promise with margin, the loop closer’s checklist, the landmine sweep, the suck script. |
| Where it leaks (Chapters 12 to 15) | Work, the people you love, money, the person you keep saying you could be. | The four work receipts, “what kind of help do you want,” the weekly look at money, the bar check. |
| The system (Chapters 16 to 18) | Too many lists, none of them in your hands when it counts. | One operating system, the transfer drill, the thirty-day reset with a seven-day on-ramp. |
Who should read it
- People who work with their hands, sell for a living, or run a crew, and are tired of their own almosts.
- Anyone who has rewritten the checklist three times for someone who was never going to read it.
- Readers who liked the book about not giving a f*ck and wanted to know what to do with the ones they kept.
- People who want blunt, funny, and useful, in that order.
Formats
Give a F*ck and Don’t Suck is a 6x9 paperback of 162 pages and a Kindle edition with color accents.
Kindle and paperback editions are coming to Amazon. The free seven-day reset is available now.
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Also by Pierce Kastleton
Build a Life That Doesn’t Eat You Alive: a darkly practical guide to habits, boundaries, money, work, and keeping your life from falling apart. Kindle and paperback on Amazon, with free tools from the book on this site.
Start with a handle
Move one rock this week.
The seven-day reset is free, printable, and small enough to survive your actual life.