No guru voice.
I do not have a secret morning routine that will fix your life by 6am.
The man behind the books
Hi. I’m Craig.
I’m not here because I’ve got life completely sorted.
I’m here because I haven’t — and because a lot of useful psychology is far more helpful when somebody explains it in normal language.
Why Average Man exists
Most of my life looks pretty ordinary. Because it is.
I’m a dad of two, a partner, a full-time worker and the owner of a dog who has never once checked whether I already have enough to do.
There’s work. Family. Bills. School runs. Jobs around the house. Trying to switch off after a long day and somehow finding your brain has decided that 10:47 at night is the perfect time to replay a conversation from Tuesday.
I know what it is like to get wound up, shut down, overthink things, feel the pressure building and still have to get up the next morning and carry on being useful to everybody.
“I didn’t want to write books for a perfect version of a man who has loads of spare time, endless motivation and a colour-coded morning routine.”
I wanted to make something for the bloke who is already juggling enough.
The day job matters too
I spend a lot of time talking to men about real life.
My work is in personal wellbeing, supporting men on probation. That means conversations about the things that do not always fit neatly into a motivational quote: pressure, anger, stress, relationships, motivation, setbacks, confidence, habits and what is going on underneath the bit everybody else can see.
Those conversations have reinforced something I already believed: men will engage with difficult stuff when it feels relevant, respectful and useful. What switches people off is being talked at, buried in jargon or made to feel like somebody else has all the answers.
Average Man Workbooks takes the same practical approach. Explain the idea. Make it relatable. Give you something to try. Let you decide what is useful.
The test I keep coming back to:
WOULD I ACTUALLY USE THIS ON A BAD TUESDAY?If the answer is no, it probably does not belong in the book.
Why write a book?
Because knowing the theory is not the same as being able to use it.
There are brilliant ideas in psychology. The problem is that some of them arrive wrapped in clinical language, perfect examples and instructions that assume you are sitting somewhere quiet with nothing else going on.
Real life is usually messier than that.
When Everything Gets Too Much started from a simple idea: take genuinely useful ways of understanding anger, stress, overthinking, pressure, communication, emotions and change — and write about them in the sort of language I would actually want someone to use with me.
That became the rule for Average Man Workbooks. Not dumbed down. Not pretending serious things are simple. Just made understandable enough to use.
No judgement.
You do not need to be brilliant at feelings before you are allowed to work on them.
No fluff.
If an exercise is there, it should help you understand something or do something.
No pretending.
Some days are hard. A workbook does not magically remove that. It can still make the next bit easier to handle.
Why “Average Man”?
Average doesn’t mean unimportant.
It means ordinary. The bloke going to work, trying to be a decent dad or partner, keeping things moving, making mistakes, having good weeks and rubbish ones, and occasionally wondering why his own head is making everything harder than it needs to be.
You should not have to become a different sort of person to get something useful from psychology.
These books are for real life, as it is.One important thing
I’m not trying to be your therapist.
Average Man Workbooks is about self-guided understanding, reflection and practical wellbeing. It is not diagnosis, treatment or a replacement for professional support when that is what you need.
My job here is simpler: make useful ideas easier to understand, easier to try and easier to come back to.
See the books →