It was only halfway through this book that I realised I have, if you stretch the definition slightly, now chosen three self-help books for this column in a row. Is this because I am in urgent need of help? No; I am, barring glitches over which I have no control and overlooking the wretched state of the world, perfectly happy with the way things are going. The problem, I realised, is sheer probability. This book was plucked from a teetering pile of self-help books languishing, or probably even breeding, on the literary editor's desk. (Of one particularly heavily advertised guru, she told me: "Choose this one as your pick of the week and you won't be writing for us again.")

But this one is different. You may be familiar with Oliver Burkeman's work, as he writes the "This Column Will Change Your Life" series for the Saturday magazine of this newspaper. I admit to not reading it very often, because, as I've said, I don't feel as though anything needs fixing in my life. (As he reminds us, it was Jimmy Carter's adviser Bert Lance who in 1977 popularised the Southern proverb "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".)

But somehow there is something that attracts me more when these columns are turned into books, and what had been a weekly optional extra has now become a daily delight. (To those of you who suspect that there is something suspect about one Guardian journalist recommending another's book, I promise that I'd be recommending this book even if it had originally appeared in the Daily Express.)

Burkeman's shtick is that he seems to have read every self-help book, and peered at every self-help website going, so that we don't have to. This offers him fertile comedic ground, and he takes good advantage of it. Being a sensible person with a properly functioning sense of humour, he has an inbuilt bullshit-detector that helps him to dispense with some of the more bogus claims and obvious charlatans. Scientologists, for example, will not be very happy with the bit where he describes dropping into their Life Improvement Centre. ("I hadn't been enlightened. Nor had I been sucked into a terrifying cult. But if the feeling you're after is mild bewilderment, combined with the sensation that you might have just wasted a small portion of your life, I can recommend the Life Improvement Centre.")

But this is a genuinely useful book; Burkeman is not in the business of pouring automatic scorn; he really does want us to become slightly happier and get a bit more done, just as the subtitle promises us. In a winning aside, he says that "adding an exclamation mark to the title of your book isn't necessarily going to help make it fun. (There are some exceptions.)" And this is an exception, because it is fun, and can be read for pleasure even if you think your self-management and feelings of personal fulfilment are tickety-boo. I like to think that a decent prose style is one of the guarantors of sanity, and Burkeman has a lovely turn of phrase, neither too dry nor too flashy; but a sort of just-rightness that makes his pronouncements sound wholly trustworthy.

And it's all fairly modest and achievable: don't sweat the big stuff, don't set yourself unrealistic goals, and don't go to too many meetings. (Large corporations indulge in meetings, we are reminded, "only because they cannot actually masturbate".) Of course, if you are fortunate enough not to have to work in an office, you might find the section on "Work Life" redundant – but I experienced a powerful glow of Schadenfreude when I contemplated the lives of the people who do, and the problems they suffer.

In short, Help is win-win. If you do find yourself with those problems which, though potentially tractable, are disproportionately aggravating, then you will find solace and good advice here. If you do not, or rather think you do not, then you will be amused anyway – and you still might learn something helpful. Either way, you won't need to read another self-help book again.