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.

Jeremy Stevenson is a clinical psychologist with a PhD from Flinders University, where his dissertation explored the effects of self-compassion on social anxiety. He has treated hundreds of clients across thousands of clinical hours and has published research in various academic journals. He has also experimented with many self-help techniques himself, and some of them have changed his life.

"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

"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

"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

"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

Publisher: Balance

Pub date: 2026-07-28

Length: 368 pages