Self Help

We asked Oliver Burkeman, the Guardian writer and author of The Antidote, to select the best self help books published in 2020. His recommended titles include spiritual guidance for the age of doomscrolling, a philosophy of failure, and practical advice for those working from home for the first time.

If you feel like you lose whole days to procrastination or indecision—or simply have too much to do!—you probably want advice on how improve your productivity. We spoke to David Allen, creator of the perennial bestseller Getting Things Done, about the best books on the subject: why we waste time, and what we can change to be more productive.

Two decades ago Andy Puddicombe was ordained as a Buddhist monk. Now back in lay life, he tries to teach the benefits of meditation to the rest of us—most notably through the Headspace app, but also by writing books. Here he chooses some of the books that inspired him, from Japanese poetry to Tibetan philosophy. Not all are meditation books but they are his "old favorites."

Elizabeth Day, author of How to Fail: Everything I've Ever Learnt from Things Going Wrong, explains how the road to success truly is paved with failure—and why we must learn to deal with it better.

Can we cultivate qualities like grit, tenacity and kindness? How about habits of the successful—hard work, perseverance and productivity? Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit and founder of the Character Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, recommends five books, including a title that graces every CEO's shelf.

The self-help genre is sometimes dismissed as simplistic or over-earnest. But, at their best, self-help books offer powerful insights into how to live. Oliver Burkeman, the Guardian columnist and author of The Antidote, recommends five of the best self-help books published in 2019.

To reach your full potential you must put as much effort into building mental resilience as you do into work or training, advises high-performance psychologist Dr Michael Gervais. Here, he selects five titles to help you find the right mindset—whether you dream of sporting stardom, artistic achievement or business success.

Most of us want to be happy, and yet it's hard to achieve. Jonathan Haidt, psychologist and author of  the classic The Happiness Hypothesis, talks us through five books, old and new, to better understand happiness.

The contemporary historian and educationalist Antony Seldon discusses his selection of books on how to be happy.

In a world where many people feel frazzled by the pace of life, can mindfulness help? What's the best way of practising it? Or is it just a fad? Philosopher Nigel Warburton talks to mindfulness expert, Tessa Watt, about the best books on mindfulness.