Don't give yourself the stress of looking for a job that matches your passion. According to this book people who are happy with their work started the job more coincidentally, but worked hard to make it their passion. The book describes how you can gain motivation with the next three goals. Autonomy is when you have a say in how, where, and when you perform the different tasks of your job. You can achieve this freedom by becoming very good in what you do. Competence in itself is also motivating you and the people around you, which brings us to the final goal of relatedness. When you are competent in what you do, get some degree of autonomy, and feeling accepted in the team, you have a good chance of feeling like you found your passion.

The author was looking for scientific proof of the concept of talent (genetic advantages to excel in some skill). He found .. none. Then, he studied a number of so-called wonder-children and found that most of them have grown up in a context where they could start learning the relevant skills at a young age. Usually at least one close family member was a specialist in the domain and at least one was some kind of teacher. He proposes that you can master any skill with 10,000 hours of practice, on the condition that you have no physical disability hindering you. Moreover, he stresses the importance of deliberate practice: Focus your practice on your weak points. A soccer player does not only play matches on training, they work on specific (sub)skills first and then integrate it.

Did you know that we sleep in consecutive cycles of about 90 minutes each? In each cycle we pass through different stages of being awake, REM sleep, and different levels of non-REM (deep) sleep. The deep NREM sleep is used to clean up and restructure existing knowledge in the long-term memory. REM sleep is where we dream and add new information in the long-term memory (from what was stored during the last few days). I imagine that this is why dreams are strange. You are trying out where the new information fits in the existing structure, by testing random connections.
This is just one interesting example from this book. Read more about sleep and how it relates to countless factors of physical and mental health!

Our brain always thinks in two ways: a fast one and a slow one. The fast way, system 1, is known as intuition or gut feeling. With everything you think of, with every decision you make, your intuition will quickly come up with a first idea. This does not happen consciously. You usually cannot say where this idea comes from and why it is or is not a good idea. System 1, intuition, determines your reaction in life-threatening situations, but it is also the cause of what is called cognitive biases. The slow way, system 2, is known as ratio. You choose whether you use ratio or not. Ratio works consciously and can be disrupted if you get distracted.
Often the ratio is more reliable (but slower). However, for people with a lot of experience in something, intuition works better than ratio. An experienced driver may not even be able to recite the steps to start a car or to shift gears. An experienced painter can accurately estimate how much paint is needed for a specific surface. An experienced teacher can tell at a glance whether a student has passed or failed an exam. However, in the West we do not believe in the power of intuition, even among very experienced professionals. We require teachers, doctors, and the like to identify and justify every step they take. Not only is this distrust misplaced, it reduces their effectiveness and efficiency.

This is your guidebook if you want to create good habits or break bad habits.
This is how you create good habits:

• Make it obvious (e.g. mark on a calendar the dates when you worked out)
• Make it attravtive (e.g. meet with friends to work out together)
• Make it easy (e.g. immedeately put your sports gear on when you get out of bed)
• Make it satisfying (e.g. reward yourzelf with a smoothie right after your workout)

And this is how you break bad habits:

• Make it invisible (e.g. put your game console in a separate room that you do not visit often)
• Make it unattravtive (e.g. put a saying about distaction next to the screen of your game consoler)
• Make it dificult (e.g. put the game console in the living room, where your parents also often are)
• Make it unsatisfying (e.g. put 5 euro in a jar before each game you play)

In the book there are more examples and variants of each of these 8 guidelines.

Financial lessons wrapped in a nice story. Two friends from Babylon, Bansir and Kobbi, are contemplating their life. They envy the fortune of their childhood friend Arkad and decide to ask him for advice on how to get more money. Arkad is more than willing to give them one tip after the other on how to earn more money, spend less money, and invest it wisely. The tips of Arkad are still useful today and help the uninformed reader to discover the simple basics of good money management in a fun and easy way.

The author, Robert Kiyosaki, felt like he had two dads. The one dad, his real dad, was not wealthy and did not teach him about money. The other dad, father of his friend and his boss as a student worker, owned multiple businesses and challenged him to think about money. In his book, Robert describes the lessons he learned from his rich dad and the mistakes made by his poor dad.
By reading this book, you will learn on how to earn more money and how to invest it wisely. You will learn about hidden costs and opportunity costs. You will learn to look at money from a more holistic and long-term point of view. Although I do not agree with every example, the book is still an eay-opener and a must-read for anyone who has no deep knowledge of financial matters.

Who is not dreaming of making a lot of money without working a lot of hours? Tim Ferriss experimented with many tactics and bundled a crapload of very concrete, actionable tips to work less. There are three main parts. First, he discusses how to free time (both professional and personal time): e.g. outsource simple tasks. Next, he explores way to automate your income: e.g. find your niche and write an ebook. Finally, he inspires you to disconnect from, well, basically anything that limits your flexibility: e.g. use a mail forwarding service to send your mail to wherever you live at that time. The book contains also a super handy list of websites and tools, which is constantly updated (with every edition and on the accompanying website).