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When Willpower Runs Out
For when trying harder is not the lever. 5 guides, 184 pages between them, 133 citations.





The When Willpower Runs Out shelf
All 5 guides, as a set. Sold separately they come to $90.
What is on it
Open any title for what it promises and what it is built on.
Reclaim Your Focus
The Dopamine Detox - A 7-Day Protocol to Reset Your Reward System & Rebuild Real Motivation
Your attention didn't weaken. It got outcompeted. Here's the mechanism first - wanting versus liking, the pleasure-pain balance, the effort paradox - and then a seven-day protocol where every single rule follows from that mechanism instead of from willpower.
Written for: People whose attention has been eaten by feeds and short-form video and who have lost the appetite for slow, effortful work; routes genuine addiction and depression to a professional in the intro and again in the FAQ
- 4 parts plus 7 daily chapters
- 15-item dependency audit
- tier-1/tier-2 input sorting
- friction-design table
- quick-reference card
- 7-day tracker
- troubleshooting FAQ
- Notes & Further Reading p26
$19 · 28 pages · 10 citations · Ebook (print-and-write audit + tracker) · on the When Willpower Runs Out shelf
Inside the book — 2 pages. Tap one to read it.
How to Stay Motivated When the Feeling Is Gone
A psychology & neuroscience field manual - dopamine as wanting, not pleasure
Motivation used to be automatic. Now you know exactly what to do and still cannot generate the pull. The catalog's deepest book: it separates wanting from liking, shows how the pursuit machinery fails while enjoyment stays intact, and spends 30 days feeding that machinery what it actually runs on.
Written for: People whose motivation used to be automatic and has gone quiet - who still know what they should be doing and still cannot generate the pull; routes two-week-plus loss of pleasure or energy to a clinician on p2 and again in ch9
- 17 chapters in 3 parts
- 7 scored audits
- 30-day protocol with tracker and day-30 review
- 4 field cards
- glossary
- grouped source list pp82-86 including contested-claim pairs
$29 · 86 pages · 64 citations · Ebook (print-and-write audits + 30-day tracker) · on the When Willpower Runs Out shelf
Inside the book — 8 pages. Tap one to read it.
The Self-Compassion Workbook for Perfectionists
Quieting the inner critic and learning to speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone you love
You hide unfinished work, replay mistakes for days, and never once feel you cleared the bar. This replaces the inner critic with a coach that is both kind and believable - without lowering a single one of your standards.
Written for: High-achieving perfectionists whose inner critic runs the show - hiding unfinished work, replaying mistakes for days, never feeling the bar was cleared
- 8 parts
- critic-mapping worksheet
- thinking-traps page
- compassionate thought record with a worked example
- self-compassion break
- RAIN practice
- translate-the-critic worksheet
- 7-day practice
- curated talks and books p20-21
$14 · 23 pages · 9 citations · Ebook (print-and-write worksheets) · on the When Willpower Runs Out shelf
Inside the book — 2 pages. Tap one to read it.
The Somatic Reset
5-Minute Tools to Calm Your Nervous System
Your mind knows the breathing exercises. Your body never got the memo. Five tools, each mapped to the nervous-system state it's built for, designed for the five minutes between meetings - not for a quiet room and twenty spare minutes you don't have.
Written for: Burned-out leaders, founders and high-performers whose minds know the breathing exercises but whose bodies never got the memo - written for the five minutes between meetings, not for a quiet room and twenty minutes
- 9 sections
- three-state map (ventral vagal / sympathetic / dorsal vagal)
- 5 tools each with best-for, time and why-it-works (physiological sigh, temperature shock, vagal hum, orienting, shake it out)
- if-you-feel / reach-for lookup table p10
- habit-stacking and practice-building page
- resources p11-12
$9 · 15 pages · 10 citations · Ebook (no worksheets) · on the When Willpower Runs Out shelf
Inside the book — 2 pages. Tap one to read it.
Unhooked
How to Quit Something You're Hooked On - why variable rewards capture you, and why removing cues beats out-willing them
You've tried to out-willpower it and lost. The fight was never against the substance or the app - it's against a learned prediction, which means the leverage is in the cues and the uncertainty, not in the moment of temptation. Remove them in order of leverage.
Written for: People trying to quit or cut down a behaviour or substance who have failed with willpower; physical dependence, co-occurring conditions and self-harm risk are routed to a clinician on p30 and flagged again on p2
- 12 chapters in 4 parts
- wanting-vs-liking and incentive-sensitisation primer
- variable-reinforcement chapter
- 6 audits (7-day honest log, five-channel cue inventory, variability score, friction audit, cost ledger, unmet-need)
- 7 ordered interventions
- urge surfing
- lapse-is-not-relapse chapter
- 14-day cue-removal sprint
- one-page protocol
- relapse autopsy sheet
- when-to-bring-in-a-professional p30
- chapter-grouped sources p31-32
$19 · 32 pages · 40 citations · Ebook (print-and-write audits + 14-day sprint) · on the When Willpower Runs Out shelf
Inside the book — 3 pages. Tap one to read it.