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An app for the thinking that only comes in total-success or total-failure

Either it's perfect or it's ruined — that's the whole thought, and Mendly logs it without arguing with the premise. One tap when a situation collapses into two options with nothing between them. No gray-area worksheet, no reframing exercise. Just a record of when the middle disappears.

The research

A study found a significant positive correlation between dichotomous thinking and the negative, self-critical dimension of perfectionism — but no correlation with the positive, achievement-oriented dimension. All-or-nothing thinking isn't what drives high standards. It's specifically tied to the self-critical version of them.

— Egan, Piek, Dyck and Rees, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2007

Want to understand why this happens? What is catastrophizing — and how to tell when you're doing it

What it actually looks like

One typo in a report and the whole thing feels ruined, not just imperfect.

A workout you couldn't finish becomes 'I didn't work out at all.'

One awkward moment in a conversation and the whole interaction gets filed as a disaster.

Eating one thing off your plan and deciding the whole day is already blown.

A project that's 90% done registering as 'basically not done.'

One piece of critical feedback erasing every piece of positive feedback you got in the same review.

Calling yourself lazy for resting, with no version of 'productive enough' in between.

When it tends to be worst

  1. Right after a small, visible error

    A single mistake in an otherwise fine piece of work is the most common trigger for the whole thing collapsing into 'ruined' rather than 'flawed.'

  2. When you're evaluating your own performance, not someone else's

    Dichotomous thinking research links this pattern specifically to self-critical perfectionism, which is why the same partial result often reads as fine for a colleague and as failure for yourself.

  3. Late in a task, close to 'done'

    The closer something is to finished, the higher the bar seems to climb, which is why a near-complete project can feel more like a failure than one that's only half started.

Quiz

What's your all-or-nothing pattern?

Question 1 of 4

What usually flips something to 'ruined'?

What people usually try first

"Finding the gray area" worksheets

These ask you to generate a middle-ground statement while the extreme version is already the one that feels true — writing '70% is still good' rarely lands when the collapse to 0-or-100 has already happened emotionally.

Positive affirmations about self-worth

Affirmations address how you feel about yourself generally, but dichotomous thinking is a situational pattern, not a stable self-belief — it fires around specific events, so a general affirmation often doesn't reach the specific collapse happening in the moment.

Being told 'nothing is ever all good or all bad'

This is true and rarely persuasive in the moment it's needed, because the whole feature of all-or-nothing thinking is that the extreme reading feels self-evident, not like an opinion someone can talk you out of.

“All-or-nothing thinking was never really about the two options it presents. It's about which situations get compressed down to two options in the first place — and that compression has a pattern, even when the content feels absolute.”

Where Mendly fits in

Mendly doesn't ask you to argue with the collapse or supply the missing middle ground — it asks for a tap the moment you notice a situation has gone from 'flawed' to 'ruined' in your head. No worksheet, no gray-area sentence to write. Over weeks, the hourly pattern view shows exactly when this thinking fires: after which kinds of tasks, under which kinds of pressure. That's the thing the label alone never gave you — not proof the thought is wrong, just proof it has a pattern.

Download on theApp Store

Free 7-day trial · then $7.99/mo or $59.99/yr

Features

Hourly patterns

See when your inner critic is loudest. Morning spirals? Late-night overthinking? Your data, your story.

Voice notes

15 seconds to say what was actually going through your head. Optional, private, and yours.

Milestone badges

16 badges that celebrate your awareness, not your perfection. First Catch, Streaks, Early Bird, Voice Found — each one earned.

Not quite your pattern? A cognitive distortions tracker for when the worksheet is too much friction might fit better

Apps like MindLift walk you through labeling the distortion and writing a balanced replacement thought. If you already know it's called all-or-nothing thinking, the labeling step isn't the missing piece — the timing data is. Mendly skips straight to that.

See the full comparison

Common questions

I already know this is called all-or-nothing thinking. What does tracking add?
Timing. Most people who can name the distortion still can't say when it fires most, or under what specific conditions. The hourly pattern data answers that question directly, which knowing the term alone doesn't.
Is this a CBT app?
No. There's no gray-area worksheet or balanced-thought exercise. Mendly logs when the pattern occurs and shows you the timing — it's a complement to CBT work, not a version of it.
How is this different from a journaling app?
Journaling asks you to write out the all-or-nothing thought and work through it. Mendly's entry is a tap — the insight comes from the pattern across many entries, not from processing any single one.
What does the free trial include?
The full app, no restrictions, for 7 days. After 7 days you choose monthly ($7.99) or annual ($59.99, about $5/month). Cancel anytime via your Apple subscriptions — no emails required.
The version of grief nobody warns you about is the replayingA catastrophizing tracker for when you know you're catastrophizing and can't stopBlack-and-white thinking, explained: what the research actually shows

See for yourself — 7 days free.

Try Mendly on iPhone. Cancel anytime via Apple subscriptions.

Download on theApp Store