Penguin presents The Shed Method, written and read by Sara Milne Rowe. Wishing to be better at something lies at the heart of modern life: a bad week to a better week, a frustrated parent to a better parent, an anxious speaker to better speaker, a burnt-out colleague to a better colleague. Doing anything new or better might sound simple, but in practice it can be tricky. The Shed Method is a mind-management system that offers practical advice for improving your decision making.

Get the results you want and come out as the Top Dog in every conversation. Fancy being the Top Dog in all your dealings? Fed up of feeling like the underdog? So many of us regularly lose in conversations before we've even opened our mouths. Often without realising it, we don't see ourselves as a peer of the other person. And we transmit this in what we do and say. (I'll fit round you. I know you're really busy....) The other person picks up on this.

Who Moved My Cheese? offered millions relief for an evergreen problem: unanticipated and unwelcome change. Now its long-awaited sequel digs deeper, to show how listeners can adapt their beliefs and achieve better results in any field. Johnson's theme is that all of our accomplishments are due to our beliefs: whether we're confident or insecure, cynical or positive, open-minded or inflexible. But it's difficult to change your beliefs - and with them, your outcomes. Find out how Hem, Haw, and the other characters from Who Moved My Cheese? deal with this challenge.

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In recent months, the pandemic has forced us all to reevaluate our assumptions about health and safety and multiple acts of police brutality have challenged most of us to reconsider our responsibility for fighting racism. Yet in our daily lives, too many of us still favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.

The best-selling coauthor of the legendary The One Minute Manager® and a former Twitter executive join forces to create the ultimate guide to creating powerful mentoring relationships. The past decade has seen the dramatic rise of a word now well known in corporate hallways: mentoring. But a new awareness about mentoring hasn't necessarily meant an increased understanding of how to implement the practice.

We all have a tendency to work around problems. We are resourceful. We improvise. We’re so accustomed to managing emergencies as they strike that we often don’t stop to think about how we could prevent crises before they happen. Why 'solve' crimes when we could stop them being committed? Why treat chronic diseases when they could be prevented from developing? Why provide shelter for the homeless rather than working to keep people housed in the first place? Why do our efforts skew so heavily towards reaction rather than prevention? 

The very best didn't get there by accident. The best have a different way of thinking and acting in their daily lives. And it's not enough to just to succeed - they also have an uncontrollable desire - the desire to get better. The good news for the rest of us is that success leaves tracks. Michael Heppell has spent his life studying successful people, attempting to distil what it is that the very best do that others don't. He's interviewed entrepreneurs, personalities and leaders from politics to education.

At some point today you will have to influence or persuade someone - perhaps ask a colleague a favour, negotiate with a contractor or get your spouse to put out the recycling. In The small BIG, three heavyweights from the world of persuasion, science and practice - Steve Martin, Noah Goldstein and Robert Cialdini - describe how, in today's information-overloaded world, it is now the smallest changes that lead to the biggest differences in results.

Over the past 20 years, Evolutionary Biologist Herman Pontzer has conducted ground-breaking studies across a range of settings, including pioneering fieldwork with Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania. This book draws on his eye-opening research to show how, contrary to received wisdom, exercise does not increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level.

In this accessible and practical book, Ozan Varol reveals nine simple strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life - whether it's landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Today, thinking like a rocket scientist is a necessity. We all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our lives. Those who can tackle these problems - without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking - enjoy an extraordinary advantage.

Radical Candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on the one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It is about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism - delivered to produce better results and help employees develop their skills and boundaries of success. Great bosses have strong relationships with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees.

It's well known that if we want to keep our bodies fit, we must go for a run from time to time. But why do so few of us take the time to develop our mental fitness, too? Enter The Mind Workout: a home exercise programme for improving your mental health and fitness. Developed from Mark Freeman's own recovery from several mental illnesses, The Mind Workout combines mindfulness, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to outline a groundbreaking health-first approach.

In Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact. Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how - by saying less and asking more - you can develop coaching methods that produce great results.

We all know that change is hard. It's unsettling, it's time-consuming, and all too often we give up at the first sign of a setback. But why do we insist on seeing the obstacles rather than the goal? This is the question that best-selling authors Chip and Dan Heath tackle in their compelling and insightful new book. They argue that we need only understand how our minds function in order to unlock shortcuts to switches in behaviour. 

Critical feedback, delivered frequently and expertly, can be a game changer - it can turn average performers into the hardest workers and stars into superstars. But fear of hurt feelings and awkward conversations often lead managers to hold back from offering crucial insights. According to recent studies, 44 per cent of managers dread giving feedback, while 65 per cent of employees wish their managers gave more.