Smart work beats hard work

While there’s no perfect guide to life out there, this book comes pretty damn close for me. Mentor has done all the legwork of optimizing some of the most critical requirements for self-actualization - health, security, development - and delivered it in a refreshingly accessible manner. It’s a book I’m sincerely excited to gift to friends and family.

What I love about it: critical topics (health, financial security, development), it's concise (just enough context and examples), it's thoughtfully organized (consistent structure for each chapter, doesn’t need to be read in order) and it's accessible (I could hand this to a teenager and expect they would understand most of it).

What I'd like to see in future versions: Gender sensitivity (unclear if the health recommendations are relevant in the same way to women as men) and mental health (Mentor focuses primarily on physical health but I would love an extension into mental health as I find it just as important for holistic wellbeing).

What I like most about this book is that the author gives a lot of examples from his own life. It's also really easy to get back to a subject of your interest, because chapters are short and focused on one subject. Almost everything is scientifically substantiated or the author has conducted his own experiments (which is really fun to read actually). What I would have liked was to have more of a narrative. Since chapters are short, it’s more of an enumeration than an easy to read book.

What helped me most in this book was that it clearly explained to me how I could form new/better habits and find the motivation to keep up with them. I was able to take a serious look at my personal finances and make changes to get rid of the ‘I-need-to-work-until-I-die’ thoughts that often occurred to me before. I now feel confident I’m able to retire early and pursue the things that matter to me in life.

A well written, practical guide to help you achieve more. It’s well argumented, to-the-point content is based on actual studies, with no bullshit. The book is well structured, allowing you to use the content that is currently relevant for you, and allowing you to skip over parts that are (currently) less relevant for you.