All-or-nothing thinking is a mental trap holding you back from becoming a better software engineer. It explains why you expand project scopes to cram in every possible feature. It explains why you won’t submit a PR until every abstraction feels flawless. It explains why you take a month to settle on a web framework for your new API. It explains why you haven’t started mentoring your fellow developers yet. And It explains why you’re stuck in a loop of self-doubt that’s tough to break.

Here is what is all-or-nothing thinking, how it undermines your engineering career, and what you can do to beat it.

What is all-or-nothing thinking? 

All-or-nothing thinking is a mental trap where we see things in extremes, without recognizing the middle ground. This mindset, also known as “black-and-white thinking” or “polarized thinking,” makes us categorize experiences into rigid boxes like success or failure, good or bad.

Our minds use schemas—mental frameworks—to process new information, and in all-or-nothing thinking, these frameworks become too strict or overly simplistic. While thinking in binary terms is quick and reduces mental effort, it often sacrifices accuracy and overlooks the nuances that truly matter.

The Scope Creep

You, the frontend wizard, were tasked with building a new search feature for the company’s web app. Armed with React and an endless supply of caffeine, you envisioned a flawless search UI filled with nested filters, dropdowns, a custom query builder, and local caching for lightning-fast queries. “Anything less would be a disaster,” you thought.

The product owners hadn’t clearly specified the requirements, so you packed the UI with every conceivable feature, thinking anything less would render it useless to the user.

As the UI became more complex, bugs crept in, and you felt overwhelmed, but asking for help seemed like admitting failure. It felt like: “either I do it all by myself, or I’m an impostor here”.

Weeks passed without a release. Self-doubt crept in, and your “perfect” feature remained incomplete. Ultimately, your all-or-nothing mindset left you stressed and stuck with a bloated search feature that users didn’t love.

In Search of the Perfect Framework

As a Python backend engineer, you faced a task that most engineers relish: finding the perfect framework to build your company’s new API service. Flask? Django? FastAPI? None seemed quite right, but you were determined to find one that met every item on your requirement list.

Driven by an all-or-nothing mentality, you meticulously assessed each framework against your list of “must-have” features: automatic documentation, authentication middleware, and real-time data processing with WebSockets. If a framework didn’t check every box, it went straight to the reject pile.

Django was dismissed for being “too bulky” with unnecessary features, Flask was ruled out for lacking built-in authentication, and FastAPI didn’t make the cut due to its less-than-ideal WebSockets implementation. You spent weeks in research, your mind fixated on finding a framework that either had all the features or was a failure.

With the deadline looming and your nerves wearing thin, you finally relented and cobbled together a patchwork solution, using various libraries held together by duct tape and custom middleware.

Needless to say, your team wasn’t impressed.

The Reluctant Mentor

As a senior software engineer specializing in Kubernetes and Spring Boot, you were presented with a new opportunity: mentoring your junior developers.

Excited yet nervous, you envisioned helping the team thrive with your extensive experience (even fantasizing about how impressive your performance review would look at the end of the quarter). However, soon, all-or-nothing thinking settled in, whispering that you didn’t know yet everything required to start mentoring.

You obsessively studied language specifications, design patterns, cloud architecture, and all the new frameworks. You couldn’t mentor the team without flawless expertise, right? You believed you needed to deliver impeccable answers on microservices design, database optimization, and Java garbage collection techniques. You even revisited obscure algorithms, just in case someone asked how to invert a binary tree.

Each week, you told yourself, “I’ll start mentoring once I brush up on one more topic.” But your ever-growing list of study topics kept pushing back the first mentoring session. Junior engineers approached you cautiously with questions, but you politely deflected them with, “Let me get back to you on that,” or “I’ll cover this soon.”

Weeks passed, and the mentoring program stalled. You had become the Oracle of All Knowledge who never shared any of it.

Emotional consequences

The previous stories are not exhaustive. You’re likely thinking now of a unique way in which you’ve fallen victim to this cognitive bug. And it affects almost everyone.

The major issue arises when dealing with the emotional consequences of non-successful projects or tasks. Again all-or-nothing thinking will often leads software engineers to extreme emotional lows. Setbacks leave no middle ground, only intense disappointment, sadness, or anger because their work isn’t “perfect.” Without recognizing this mental trap or having supportive teams to offer perspective, their self-esteem suffers.

This dent in confidence drives them to double down and strive for even greater levels of excelence in future projects. Instead of refining their approach, they place more pressure on themselves, worsening their all-or-nothing mindset It’s not the kind of loop you want to be stuck in, as finding a clear exit condition is challenging.

How to Beat it ?

You might argue that these challenges are common in software engineering (and most industries) and that there are many ways to address them. You may have already heard advices like, “Keep it simple, stupid”, “Ship early and frequently”, or “Time-box your tasks” among others.

While I don’t dismiss the usefulness of these tips, I believe they offer only superficial patches since they don’t change your mindset. Here are some additional tips that will help you reprogram your thinking:

See for Yourself: I strongly believe that truly understanding and internalizing a problem is the first step toward transformation. Reflect on past instances where you fell into the all-or-nothing trap. Make a habit of writing them down at the end of each day (or whenever suits you best). Share the concept with close friends and understand how it affects them. This distortion is easier to recognize in hindsight since it often happens automatically, but with consistent awareness, you’ll be more likely to catch it in real-time and consciously shift your thinking.

Visualize Metaphors: Use vivid metaphors to visualize your outcomes. One that I like is a slider instead of a checkbox in the user interface. Rather than requiring every feature to be perfectly “checked” imagine outcomes falling somewhere along the slider. Not all requirements in a project are of equal importance, so you can gradually “slide” the critical features forward and deliver things incrementally. Instead of thinking in black and white, think in shades of gray. Use the metaphor that hits you in the gut.

Seek Help: If you’re stuck, talk to someone. Your perspective may be too clouded to see a solution clearly. Share your challenges with team members or trusted friends. If it feels overwhelming or dire, consider reaching out for professional support.

How does all-other-nothing thinking impact your life? Do you have other techniques that have worked for you? Share your insights in the comments!

Final Thoughts

All-or-nothing thinking can trap you in a cycle of perfectionism that causes stress and missed opportunities. To break free, recognize how this mindset affects you. Next, learn to harness your drive for excellence to your advantage by noticing when it crosses over into paralyzing perfectionism. It’s a delicate balance, but with practice, you can pinpoint when the pursuit of excellence turns into an all-or-nothing trap.

Remember that growth happens in the gray areas, where mistakes become learning opportunities and progress unfolds incrementally.

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Great software engineering isn’t just about coding skills; it’s about mastering your mindset—a truth that applies to any career. This blog is focused on unlocking the power of your mind and using it to transform your journey as a software engineer.