Sarah Knight - Get Your Sh*t Together

Copyright 2016 Emergency Biscuit Inc.

Cover design by Lauren Harms

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Illustrations and hand lettering by Lauren Harms

ISBN 978-0-316-50506-2

E3-20161117-JV-PC

Contents

Hello, and welcome to Get Your Shit Together . Thanks for reading! Before we get too deep, I wanted to clarify a few things.

First, despite the real or virtual aisle you may have found it in, this is not a traditional self-help book.

Its more of a let-me-help-you-help-yourself-help book, with me here to help when your self gets in the way. Lets face itif you could help yourself, youd have done it by now, right? Also, unlike many traditional self-help authors, I am going to use the word shit 332 times (including several shitmanteaus of my own invention), so please do not go on Amazon saying you were expecting sunshine and kittens and got shitstorms and shittens. My mother reads all of those reviews and it really upsets her when people dont get me.

Second, although your life may be a messand I will help you sort it outthis is not a typical guide to tidying up.

We wont be spending the next three hundred pages gathering your physical shit into a pile and thanking it for its service before you ship it all off to the Salvation Army. Instead, were going to tidy up your mental clutter and your metaphorical shitsuch as your career, finances, creative pursuits, relationships, and healthand were going to do it all without hoisting a single trash bag or having an introspective conversation with a winter coat.

Finally, just to be 100 percent clear: If you were looking for tips on scat play, this is not the book for you .

Im not judging! I simply want to manage expectations. Thats what authors notes are for.

So what IS this book? Well, I think of it as a delightfully profane one-stop shop for tidying your mindand making your life easier and better.

Like, a lot easier and better, no matter where youre starting from.

You may be literally lying on your couch, sitting at a bus stop, or dangling your feet from the Herman Miller Aeron chair behind your big shiny deskbut Im guessing you picked up this book because, figuratively, youre in somewhat of a rut. And theres no shame in that. Ruts (even literal ones) are easy to fall into. People do it all the time.

Yours could be shaped like a pair of comfy sweatpants and filled with stale PBR. It might be lined with the silvery stock options you stand to cash in if you can just stick with your soul-killing job for five more years. Or maybeand this is probably more likelyyour rut takes the form of the regular old daily grind: work and finances and family and friends and a lot of other shit you need help staying on top of, plus neglected health (and even more neglected hobbies), and capped off by the dreams you only admit to friends after a few cocktails or are too scared or anxious or overwhelmed to admit to yourself at all.

Sound familiar? Well, then, strap in! Because this little let-me-help-you-help-yourself mental tidying guide can hoist you out of your rut and drop you smack-dab into the life you want, and deserve, to live. (In a pinch, you could lay it in an actual rut and step on it to keep your shoes from getting all muddy. But maybe save that for after you read it.)

Get Your Shit Together shows you how to set goals, how to push through small annoyances and thorny obstacles to meet those goals, and then how to imagine and achieve even bigger goals that you may not, until now, have thought possible. It will help you get out of your own way, and stay out. And it will liberate you from the shit you think you should be doing so you can bang out the shit you need to do, and get started on the shit you want to do.

Hows that for managing expectations?

Basically, this book will do for your life what Tim Ferriss did for the workweekbreak it into small, manageable chunks that leave you with plenty of free time to pursue your dream of becoming a self-satisfied entrepreneur/public speaker/sociopath.

No, Im kidding. But it will do that first part, if you keep reading.

We all have our Oh shit moments.

They can happen when we compare the balance in our bank account to the balance on our credit card and find out what overdraft protection was meant for, or when we pull on our favorite pair of pants and realize they didnt fit two sizes ago. Or maybe when we wake up next to our formerly favorite person and realize he or she didnt fit two years ago.

Yikes.

My most recent one of those moments came when I realized that the reason I was so unhappy all the time was because I didnt love my job anymoreand not just that job with that company, but really an entire career I no longer wanted to devote my life to. It wasnt pretty. And it was followed by a bunch more moments of What the fuck am I going to do? and How the fuck am I going to do it? before I was able to get out of my hamster-on-a-wheel-shaped rut and start making a few Big Life Changes.

Now Im here to show you how you can make some big changes too. Or small ones. Whatever you need to do to be happy.

Honestly? You just have to get your shit together.

Again, IM NOT JUDGING. Its completely understandable why change (of any size) hasnt yet made it onto your to-do list. Its one thing to have an Oh shit moment, but its quite another to actually do something about it . Especially if youre the kind of person who has no idea where to start. Or maybe you have no trouble getting started, but you tend to lose steam before you finishtheres too much to do and not enough time to do it, and even if you could do it all, for fucks sake, how do you avoid driving yourself crazy along the way?!?

I assure you, its possible.

Getting, having, and keeping your shit together enables you to experience potentially life-changing realizations and then move forward to the doing something about them and not going crazy side of things. Its kind of amazing. And none of this stuff is as hard as you might thinkall it takes is a different way of thinking about and doing shit than you might be used to.

A better way. An easier way.

And it works whether youre an overwhelmed underachiever or a high-functioning basket case. Believe me, I know from experience.