For seven years, we’ve helped professionals break the habits they keep going back to. Our private, 90-day Behavior Control System has a 97% success rate.
290+ clients in 12 countries. No rehab, and nobody has to know.
Dopamine: wanting, motivation
Employer names indicate participant background, not company endorsement.
§01Why habits come back
Three forces keep a habit going, and willpower can't beat any of them on its own.
Each hit releases a burst of dopamine. When that happens again and again, your brain adapts by turning down how strongly it responds. So the highs get weaker, the lows get lower, and you start needing the habit just to feel normal. That’s the fog, the flatness and the lost drive.
Dopamine Baseline Receptors
At the same time, your brain learns what was around each hit: the place, the time, the people, the feeling. Glutamate, a chemical your brain uses to learn and remember, helps store those links. Those links become your triggers.
Place · People · Mood · Time · Thought
And when a trigger hits and a craving builds, your frontal cortex, the part of you that makes promises and keeps them, has less say. The faster reward system deeper in your brain gets more of it.
Under stress, the short route gets there first.
Control can be trained, measured and rebuilt.
How we work§02The 90 days
It isn’t a course you binge on a weekend, and it doesn’t take over your life. It takes about 30 minutes a day: one lesson each morning, about 15 minutes, a 5-minute log of your day at night, and north stars that fit into the routine you already have.
Day 15: you stop
Days 1 to 30
You don’t start by quitting. You start by fixing the ground you’re standing on.
By Day 30: you’re sleeping properly, you wake up with energy, your days run on your north stars instead of the habit, and you’ve been free of the habit for over two weeks.
Days 31 to 60
Stop fighting cravings with willpower. Start beating them with systems.
By Day 60: a craving isn’t an emergency anymore. You’ve been through dozens of them. You know exactly what to do, and you know it passes.
Days 61 to 90
You can break every habit and still go back, if you still see yourself as the person who does it.
By Day 90: you’re not someone trying to quit anymore. You’re someone who doesn’t do that.
§03Results
290+
clients
Habits we help with: alcohol, weed, porn, nicotine, scrolling and more.
12
countries
97%
success rate
Marcel R.Netherlands
Weed · Cigarettes · Phone scrolling, for 15 years
“I’m totally done with all three of these bad habits. It’s out of my system.”
Read the case studySignificant behavior change by Day 90, and no relapse through six months of aftercare.
98.4%
had tried and failed before
§04In their words
Commercial director, FMCG company, Netherlands
I’m totally done with all three of these bad habits. I haven’t been doing them, not a single time. It’s out of my system.
Tech founder, New York
Before starting, I was using Adderall two, three times a week. It’s been 31, 32 days since the last time I took it and I’m feeling great.
Founder, USA
The difference between me on porn for the rest of my life and me off of porn for the rest of my life is 1,000% worth the investment.
Senior operator, Belgium
I’ve been sober for 56 days today. I’ve only craved alcohol maybe once or twice during this time.
Tech lead, USA
This is the best that I’ve been in those 10 years.
Senior operator, Netherlands
I’ve been sober for 71 days now and this time it was easier than previous attempts.
Client interviews, shared with consent. Some faces are blurred at the client's request. Individual results vary.
§05Programs
Our 90-day program, private and one-on-one, built around your life. It runs in two places.
Worldwide
The Behavior Control System for professionals anywhere in the world.
India
The Behavior Control System for Indian leaders earning ₹50 lakh or more a year.
No clinic. Every call is on Zoom, audio only, camera off, and group sessions are anonymous. Messages run on an encrypted app, and we'll sign an NDA if you want one.
You choose how much support you have, from the System on its own to unlimited one-on-one access to a Phalanx specialist.
On every program with specialist support, follow it for the 90 days and through the six months of aftercare. If you haven't had a significant reduction in relapses over that time, you get your money back.
Every program starts with an application and a free Root-Cause Diagnostic. We tell you honestly on the call whether we can help.
§06Our story
Phalanx began in 2019. Our founder, Manish “Leo” Shetty, had lost years to alcohol, weed, cocaine and porn. He went deep into why capable people keep doing what they've decided to stop, and tested everything on himself first.
In 2021 he started writing about it on X, where more than 100,000 people now follow the work. In 2022 he took on his first clients.
Since then, 290+ founders, directors, engineers and athletes in 12 countries have worked with us. Today Phalanx Labs is a behavior and performance engineering firm with one focus: behavior control.
§07Mission
We study why capable people lose control under pressure, so they keep it when it matters most. When most people lose control, they pay for it. When an executive, a business owner, a founder or a leader loses control, other people pay.
Discipline, purpose and sacrifice all rest on one skill: doing what you decided, even when a trigger hits. That skill can be built. Behavior is the output of conditions, and conditions can be engineered.
The people we work with have plenty of willpower. It just keeps losing in the same few moments. So we work like engineers. We find where the pattern actually happens, change what surrounds it, decide the hard moments in advance, measure what happens, and revise.
One problem, solved better every year: self-control, and the performance it unlocks. Real clients, real numbers, nothing invented. And the method beats the man: it is written down so it can be taught.
InsightsFrom the library