Mark Manson

Background

Mark Manson is from Austin, Texas in the United States. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts to study and graduated from Boston University with a degree in finance in 2007.

Mark Manson started his first blog in 2009 as a marketing channel for his dating advice business and later shifted to blogging full-time as a digital nomad.

Career as a Blogger

Mark Manson's website, markmanson.net, hosts a popular blog written by Manson that garnered 400,000 monthly visitors in 2014 and had grown to 2 million monthly visitors by 2016. He writes about topics related to culture, dating and relationships, life choices, and psychology, and states that he writes 'personal development advice that doesn't suck.'

Mark Manson's articles have been published and quoted in CNN, BBC News, Business Insider, Yahoo! News and The Sydney Morning Herald, Time, Vox, The Huffington Post, and others.

In her book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, author Elizabeth Gilbert cites Mark Manson's blog, stating, "I recently read a fabulous blog by a writer named Mark Manson, who said that the secret to finding your purpose in life is to answer this question in total honesty: 'What's your favorite flavor of shit sandwich?'"

Models

Mark Manson's first book, Models: Attract Women through Honesty, was self-published in 2011 and by 2014 it had sold over 15,000 copies. The book teaches men how to attract women through honest communication and creating a lifestyle that's in line with one's values, standing in contrast to many popular ideas in the pickup artist community that have been labeled as deceptive and dishonest.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Mark Manson's second book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, was published under the imprint of HarperOne, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, and was released on September 13, 2016. It first appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List at #6 for the category of How-to and Miscellaneous for the week of October 2, 2016. It also appeared on the Washington Post's Bestseller List at #9 in the Non-fiction/General category for the week of September 25, 2016 and on the Toronto Start List at #1 in the Self-Improvement category on September 23, 2016.

The book is a reaction to the self-help industry and what Manson saw as a culture of mindless positivity that isn't practical or helpful for most people. Manson uses many of his own personal experiences to illustrate how life's struggles often give it more meaning, which, he argues, is a better approach than constantly trying to be happy.

Manson's approach and writing style have been categorized by some as contrarian to the general self-help industry, using blunt honesty and profanity to illustrate his ideas.