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Thank you. Here's what the pilot was really testing.
You answered before you knew what this study was looking for. That's what makes your answers useful. Below is the full idea behind the episodes, the card and the questions you answered.
The Fear of Failure Loop
From perfectionism to procrastination
The problem isn't high standards. It's what a weak first draft is felt to mean.
Have you ever had an assignment you could have started days ago but never did? You re-read the instructions, search for another example, watch one more video, reorganise your notes, and tell yourself you're preparing. Then the deadline arrives and the page is still blank.
It looks like procrastination. But what if the real problem isn't an unwillingness to work, but that starting means facing the possibility of not being good enough?
Two students, one paper
Same reflection paper, due in ten days. Both are aiming for the highest grade.
Writes a rough draft
Sees where it's weak and revises. For her, a weak draft is information about what to fix.
Still has nothing written
Rereads the rubric, studies sample papers, searches for a stronger thesis. Every possible opening is measured against the finished paper and found wanting.
Their standards are identical. What differs is what an imperfect draft is taken to mean. Research separates adaptive from maladaptive perfectionism, and they behave in opposite ways: the first reduces procrastination, the second increases it (Huang et al., 2023). What makes it maladaptive isn't how high the standard is, but what feels at stake in missing it.
That stake is fear of failure. So the goal isn't to lower anyone's standards. It's to change what failure means to them.
A loop that protects itself
Over-analysis is fear in disguise. Rereading the brief, researching further and rebuilding the outline feel like conscientious preparation, which is why the behaviour lasts where open avoidance wouldn't. Procrastination is a low-effort way to avoid unpleasant task feelings, and stress makes it worse (Sirois, 2023).
Fear of failure is the link. It connects perfectionism to procrastination (Cho & Lee, 2022), together with treating one failure as proof of a wider flaw (Yosopov et al., 2024). Among Filipino college students, fear of failure and academic stress explained 43% of the variance in procrastination (Obenza et al., 2024).
Feeling overwhelmed follows from this rather than causing it. When every step has to be flawless, none can be rough, so the task grows the closer you look. That's why breaking a task into smaller parts rarely helps on its own: the same impossible standard lands on every piece.
What a failure would "say about me"
A missed deadline is an event. The belief that it reveals something permanent about your intelligence or worth is a claim about who you are. That claim, not the task, is what a student is defending when they reopen the outline for the fourth time.
Rogers: the ideal self vs. the actual self
Distress comes from the gap between the person you believe you should be and the person you experience yourself as (Rogers, 1959). For a perfectionistic student, the ideal self produces flawless work, so any finished draft exposes the gap. The unwritten essay can still be excellent; the written one can't pretend to be.
Bandura: the evidence you never collect
The strongest source of self-belief is mastery experience: direct evidence that you did something (Bandura, 1997). It can't be gained by watching, reading or planning. A student who never submits a rough draft never sees one survive, so avoidance removes the very evidence that could change the belief.
Self-compassion matters too. Students who treat themselves harshly when they fall short procrastinate more (Sapancı, 2021), which shows that the delay is about self-judgement, not task difficulty.
A standard built by others, carried as your own
Filipino students who believe others demand perfection treat themselves less kindly and are less resilient (Tan, 2023). Across 82 studies and nearly 24,000 students, perceived parental expectations and criticism rose steadily from 1989 to 2019 (Curran & Hill, 2022).
In the Philippines the pressure is visible: licensure results are published with the names of passers and topnotchers, and schools hang tarpaulins announcing passing rates. Where grades are also tied to family honour and economic security, the standard a student fears missing is assembled from parents, teachers and institutions, then carried inward and felt as one's own.
Target the fear, not the schedule
Time-management training is the usual answer, but the delay is emotional in origin; a better schedule doesn't make a threatening task less threatening (Sirois, 2023). So this project combines two things that act on the fear directly:
- REBT's ABCDE method (Ellis & Knaus, 1977) catches the belief behind the delay and disputes it. It keeps the preference ("I want this to be excellent") and disputes only the rigid demand ("it must be excellent, or I've failed as a person"). In a trial with 128 students, procrastination fell and stayed lower three months later (Amoke et al., 2025).
- Self-compassion sets the tone, so disputing the belief doesn't turn into more self-criticism. A brief self-compassion programme reduced maladaptive perfectionism in a randomised trial (Woodfin et al., 2021).
The ABCDE card, worked through
Honest limits: REBT is normally delivered by trained practitioners over several sessions, so a self-guided version will likely have a smaller effect. Most of the evidence also comes from outside the Philippines, which is one reason this project includes a pilot.
How the series carries the message
Three episodes of 60–90 seconds, one link of the chain each, plus the ABCDE card and a 20-minute rough-draft timer. Each episode names the pattern as it happens and pairs it straight away with one practical counter-move, because a video that only dramatises how hard a task is can make it feel even bigger.
| Episode | Link in the chain | ABCDE step | Counter-move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · One More Source | The urge to keep researching | A, B, C: name it | Close all but three tabs |
| 2 · A Draft, Not a Verdict | The fear that a weak draft reflects badly on you | D, E: question it | Ask three questions, including "what would I tell a friend?" |
| 3 · Worst Acceptable Paragraph | The first rough attempt | E in action | A 20-minute rough draft, then fix one sentence |
The storytelling choices
Mira, a 19-year-old Filipino student, lives the loop so viewers can recognise it without being labelled "perfectionists". Many people with this pattern reject that word precisely because their work isn't perfect.
The Doubt Mimic is the fear made visible. Its size is the scoreboard: it shrinks as the belief is named, questioned and tested, but it never disappears, because the thought may come back.
The game layer (quests, XP, a momentum bar) frames starting as play. XP is earned for beginning, never for quality.
Mira's gold card is the real card on this site, and Episode 3 ends with a real rough draft and one revision, so viewers see imperfect work improve instead of being told it can.
I know this loop from the inside
I once intended to study law. I passed the PhilSAT and submitted my requirements to a law school, but I never enrolled. I had concluded that my memory wasn't sharp enough for the volume of cases law school requires. Neither belief was an established fact, and the only way to test them was to enrol.
What stopped me wasn't an assessment by anyone qualified to make one. It was my own appraisal of what struggling would reveal about me. Because I didn't enrol, I'll never know whether that belief was true.
I now recognise the same pattern in something as ordinary as an essay researched for a week but never begun. If this project helps even a few students recognise it while the stakes are still an assignment rather than a career decision, it will have been worth making.
— Danilo Giltendez, creatorWhat the pilot measures
Awareness alone doesn't count as success, because the problem is behavioural. A small pilot with 8–10 volunteers checks whether people actually start, and whether the fear behind the delay changes too. Faster starts without less fear would suggest people are complying, not that anything has changed.
Your check-ins measured these. Faster starts without less fear would suggest compliance rather than change, which is why the questions asked about the fear as well as the task.
| Indicator | What it shows | How it's measured |
|---|---|---|
| Starting the task | Whether people actually begin sooner | Whether and when the named task was started, 2 days after the session |
| Rigid belief | Whether "it must be perfect" is weakening | Ratings before and after the episodes |
| Fear of failure | Whether the dread changed, not just the behaviour | Ratings before and after |
| Confidence to start | "I can start even if it isn't good yet" | Ratings before, after and 2 days later |
| Using the card | Whether watching turned into doing | Card and timer use, and a follow-up question |
| In your own words | Whether the belief shifted | Two short written answers |
A change from the original plan: the proposal planned four weeks with daily logs. To fit the term, the pilot runs as one 20-minute session and a 1-minute follow-up two days later, on this site. A control question that shouldn't change helps spot answers that only look better because people just watched the videos. Results are an early signal, not proof.
About your answers
They're stored under your gamer tag, never your name, and reported as group averages. Short written answers may be quoted with your gamer tag. You can still leave the pilot from the pilot page, and leaving deletes your answers.
This is a student project, not therapy
If fear of failing is affecting your sleep, mood or daily life, talk to someone. Your campus Guidance and Counseling Office is a good first step. In the Philippines, the NCMH Crisis Hotline is available 24/7 at 1553.
References (16)
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- Amoke, C. V., Ede, M. O., Mawila-Chauke, D., & Obeagu, I. E. (2025). Disputing and challenging academic procrastination behaviors in students using REBT approach. Medicine, 104(9), Article 40020099. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40020099/
- Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.
- Cho, M., & Lee, Y.-S. (2022). The effects of medical students' self-oriented perfectionism on academic procrastination: The mediating effect of fear of failure. Korean Journal of Medical Education, 34(2), 121–129. https://doi.org/10.3946/kjme.2022.224
- Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2022). Young people's perceptions of their parents' expectations and criticism are increasing over time: Implications for perfectionism. Psychological Bulletin, 148(1–2), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000347
- Ellis, A., & Knaus, W. J. (1977). Overcoming procrastination. Institute for Rational Living.
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- Huang, H., Ding, Y., Liang, Y., Wan, X., Peng, Q., Zhang, Y., Kong, D., & Chen, C. (2023). The association between perfectionism and academic procrastination among undergraduate nursing students: The role of self-efficacy and resilience. Nursing Open, 10(10), 6758–6768. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.1922
- Obenza, B. N., Kileste, F. L., Mesajon, J., Canciller, C., Escudero, M. J. F., Ligasan, N. G., Palacios, G., & Solis, J. (2024). The mediating effect of academic stress on fear of failure and academic procrastination of college students. International Journal of Humanities, Management and Social Science, 7(2), 63–73. https://lamintang.org/journal/index.php/ij-humass/article/view/685
- Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships, as developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A study of a science: Vol. 3. Formulations of the person and the social context (pp. 184–256). McGraw-Hill.
- Sapancı, A. (2021). The mediating role of self-compassion in the relationship between perfectionism and academic procrastination in pre-service teachers. Journal of Pedagogical Research, 5(4), 214–229. https://doi.org/10.33902/JPR.2021474638
- Sirois, F. M. (2023). Procrastination and stress: A conceptual review of why context matters. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(6), Article 5031. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20065031
- Tan, J. S. T. (2023). The mediating role of self-compassion in the relationship between trait perfectionism and psychological resilience among Filipino university students. Cogent Psychology, 10(1), Article 2168424. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2023.2168424
- Woodfin, V., Molde, H., Dundas, I., & Binder, P.-E. (2021). A randomized control trial of a brief self-compassion intervention for perfectionism, anxiety, depression, and body image. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 751294. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.751294
- Yosopov, L., Saklofske, D. H., Smith, M. M., Flett, G. L., & Hewitt, P. L. (2024). Failure sensitivity in perfectionism and procrastination: Fear of failure and overgeneralization of failure as mediators of traits and cognitions. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 42(6), 705–724. https://doi.org/10.1177/07342829241249784