Dynamics of the Quality of Life

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This summer, I'm in the class "ESD.74 System Dynamics for Engineers" taught by J. Bradley Morrison. Systems Dynamics was created by Professor Jay Forrester of MIT in the 1950s. A true MIT heritage indeed. In essence, system dynamics is an approach to understand the behavior of complex systems over time. My inspiration for this post came from my assignments regarding causal loop diagrams. Casual loop diagrams are visual aids that illustrate how related variables affect one another. 

Instead of engineering or business systems, I created the "Dynamics of the Quality of Life". A picture paints a thousand words. 

The convention goes like this. A positive (+) sign indicates that the two related variables change in the same direction. A negative (-) sign says that the two related variables change in the opposite direction. For example, when we work harder, we have less freedom (more work, less freedom => -ve). When we have less freedom, our quality of lives will drop (less freedom, less quality of life => +ve). 

Most of us start with the reinforcing (R) fulfillment loop to increase the quality of our lives. Once we have more money and hence more spending power, we go into the balancing (B) commitment loop which makes us work harder, and have less freedom (balancing workaholic loop), resulting in a decrease to the quality of life. 

Simplistic this causal loop diagram may be, it captures the essence of work-life balance. Are your loops well-balanced?

Thanks very much for reading.

Works Cited

Sterman, J. D. (2000). Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. USA: Irwin McGraw-Hill.