Journalist and author Oliver Burkeman is well-known for his long-running Guardian column, 'How to Change Your Life', and has written three best-selling books on happiness, productivity and time management. In this radio collection, he looks at four central ills of modernity—busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Talking to a range of experts, he discovers how these problems became so widespread, and how we can go about tackling them.

Oliver Burkeman explores why people are often more successful - as are organisations, armies and governments - when they focus on reasons they are likely to fail; asks where happiness comes from, and whether we look for it in the wrong places; explores a phenomenon that has come to be called 'fungineering' – attempts to boost happiness in the workplace; and confronts what many of us see as the most negative of all experiences: death.

Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl is known as the founder of logotherapy, a mode of psychotherapy based on human's motivation to search for meaning in his life. The author discusses his ideas in the context of other prominent psychotherapies and describes the techniques he uses with his patients to combat the "existential vacuum".

Every one of us will face an unexpected decision crisis in our lives. Whether it’s a life-changing situation—job loss, illness, divorce, death—or a happier event—a new job opportunity, buying a first home, or other important occasion—there are times when you will be forced to make big decisions under great pressure.

Modern knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations - a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work. There was a time when tools like email felt cutting edge, but a thorough review of current evidence reveals that the "hyperactive hive mind" workflow they helped create has become a productivity disaster, reducing profitability and perhaps even slowing overall economic growth.

Since launching the mega-bestselling wellness program the Whole30, Melissa Urban has taught millions of people how to establish healthy habits and successfully navigate pushback and peer pressure. She knows firsthand that boundaries—clear limits you set to protect your energy, time, and health—are the key to feelings of security, confidence, and freedom in every area of your life. Now, in The Book of Boundaries, she shows you how boundaries are the key to better mental health, increased energy, improved productivity, and more fulfilling relationships.

Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics - we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us”.

By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

We live in a hierarchical world where experience has traditionally been the key to promotion. But that period is over! Straight, clear-cut career trajectories no longer exist. Industries disappear, job descriptions change, and people's interests and passions evolve. The key to riding this wave, entrepreneur James Altucher advises, is to constantly be curious about what's next, to be comfortable with uncertainty so you can keep navigating the rough waters ahead, and most importantly, to pursue the things that interest you.

In The Marshmallow Test, Mischel explains how self-control can be mastered and applied to challenges in everyday life - from weight control to quitting smoking, overcoming heartbreak, making major decisions, and planning for retirement. With profound implications for the choices we make in parenting, education, public policy and self-care, The Marshmallow Test will change the way you think about who we are and what we can be.

Informed by decades of research and over 115,000 brain scans, the Amen Clinic has revealed an insight first met with skepticism and now accepted as foundational neuroscience: Emotional and cognitive problems are intimately linked to particular areas of the brain, and to heal we need to identify and treat those areas.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Chasing the Scream, a radically new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. What really causes depression and anxiety - and how can we really solve them?

What does it really mean to be a grown-up in today's world? We assume that once we "get it together" with the right job, marry the right person, have children, and buy a home, all is settled and well. But adulthood presents varying levels of growth and is rarely the respite of stability we expected. Turbulent emotional shifts can take place anywhere between the ages of 35 and 70 when we question the choices we've made, realize our limitations, and feel stuck - commonly known as the "midlife crisis".

Nobody ever looked at an empty calendar and said, "The best way to spend this time is by cramming it full of meetings!" or got to work in the morning and thought, Today I'll spend hours on Facebook! Yet that's exactly what we do. Why?

In Plays Well With Others, Eric Barker dives into these questions, drawing on science to reveal the truth beyond the conventional wisdom about human relationships. Combining his compelling storytelling and humor, Barker explains what hostage negotiation techniques and marital arguments have in common, how an expert con-man lied his way into a twenty-year professional soccer career, and why those holding views diametrically opposed to our own actually have the potential to become our closest, most trusted friends.