The 12 Levers: The Complete Psychological Toolkit For Improving Your Life

The last self-help book you'll ever need—learn how to accelerate personal growth and mental well-being with the collective wisdom of self-help: the 12 Levers.

"A powerful toolkit that you can use for whatever challenges life has thrown at you." —Annie Duke, bestselling author of Thinking in Bets and Quit


After years of research—analyzing 106 self-help books and 23 therapies—psychology experts Spencer Greenberg and Jeremy Stevenson discovered that, from a bird’s-eye view, all self-help techniques collapse into just 12 broad strategies. Knowing these 12 Levers can prepare you for so many of the challenges that life will throw at you. You’ll learn how to…

Clarify your intrinsic values to give your life direction
Overcome fear by using the most scientifically validated anxiety approach in the world
Alleviate insomnia and out-of-sync sleep routines with techniques largely known only to sleep therapists
Enrich your downtime by doing more glad-you-did-it activities
Get more done by understanding the three factors of The Productivity Equation
Interrupt spirals of self-consciousness using the Attention Training Technique

…and much more.
Together, the 12 Levers form the complete psychological toolkit for improving your life.

Spencer Greenberg is an entrepreneur and mathematician with a PhD in applied math from NYU. He’s the founder and CEO of ClearerThinking.org, a psychology education and research organization that designs and conducts novel studies in psychology and offers more than 80 interactive educational tools to the general public, used by hundreds of thousands of people. His work has been featured by numerous major media outlets, such as Forbes, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Independent, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Fast Company, and Financial Times.

“In the confusing, uncertain, and too much information world in which we live, The 12 Levers does us a favor, cutting through the information clutter to array a dozen core techniques for making life better and happier from the hundreds of self-help guides that are out there. The book is clear, thoroughly researched and well-written. Please read it before you buy another self-help book.”

—Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, Why We Work, and co-author of Practical Wisdom and Choose Wisely

“I’ve read an embarrassing number of self-help books in my life. I could have saved a lot of time by just reading The 12 Levers, which distills the common truths across all of them. It’s the most thoughtful and comprehensive self-help book I’ve ever read—written with empathy and clarity.”

—Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, New York Times bestselling author of Everybody Lies

“This is the mother of all self-help books! Spencer and Jeremy have ingested a library’s-worth of advice books and given us the evidence-based ones that actually work. This book would be a huge time saver even if it didn’t have great productivity tips in chapter 8.”

—AJ Jacobs, NYT bestselling author

“Many self-help books promise transformation. Many fewer explain the mechanisms by which transformation occurs. The 12 Levers looks past schools of thought, slogans, and storytelling to identify the repeatable psychological procedures that truly drive change. You will come away with a much clearer understanding of approaches you've encountered in the past, as well as a powerful toolkit that you can use for whatever challenges life has thrown at you."

—Annie Duke, bestselling author of Thinking in Bets and Quit