Infinite cycles of badness

I don’t know if this is more about psychology than creativity, but I know that most creative types go through good and bad periods, times when they are prolific and times when they are not. One odd observation is that when I am getting lots done in terms of work/creative endeavours, I also have time to do the house-work and exercise. Why is that?

The answer is the cycle of badness/goodness. You may recognise this as a cycle of depressive feedback or similar, but all I know is that it’s called the Stig… I mean all I know is that this is a good explanation for how time gets wasted when there’s little spare and seems so freely available when I get lots done.

I think the diagram speaks for itself, but put simply when I feel bad I want to feel better, but the things I do get me more depressed. When I’m happy the things I do are likely to keep me happy. The arrows between layers are examples of actions that can transition from one loop to another. For the mathematicians and engineers amongst you, the emotional state (red or green) is the hidden or latent variable in a Dynamic Bayesian network where the probability of an observable dependent action being one that keeps the emotional state the same is higher than one that transitions the emotional state.

Just so you know :)