Closed Loop Living: How Mutualism Makes Your Life Anti-Fragile
- ERIC BOROMISA
- Oct 16
- 5 min read
We talk about leadership and governance like they’re abstract systems, but here’s the truth: your life is the first system you ever manage.
If your personal loops are open—if you operate like the world is just one big buffet of extraction—you will burn out, stall out, or blow up. It might take a decade, but the loop always closes.
On the other hand, living as a closed loop—what I call Mutualist Living—makes your life anti-fragile. You create a self-reinforcing cycle of growth, trust, and opportunity that gets stronger with every turn.
Open Loop Life: The Hedonic Treadmill in Disguise
Let’s start with the version most people are living.
Open loop living sounds like this:
“I’ll be happy when I…”
…get the promotion.
…hit the IPO.
…buy the vacation house.
“I need more to feel secure.”
More wealth.
More recognition.
More leverage over other people.
At first, it works. You hustle. You grind. You hit a milestone. You get the dopamine spike.
And then, almost immediately, you’re chasing the next thing.
Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill—you run faster and faster, but your baseline happiness never moves. Open loop living is its operating system.
And the side effects are ugly:
Chronic anxiety (because no amount is ever enough).
Transactional relationships (because people are either helping your chase—or they’re in the way).
Fragile identity (because when the career title, wealth, or audience goes, so do you).
This is the life script of many “successful” people who wake up at 50 realizing they’re exhausted, lonely, and unsure who they are without the hustle.
Closed Loop Living → Mutualism for the Self
Closed loop living flips the script. It’s not about giving everything away or living in a yurt.
It’s about designing your personal systems so energy, opportunity, and meaning circulate instead of leak.
Here’s what that looks like:
Your Inputs Match Your Values
You’re intentional about what (and who) you let into your life.
Time, attention, and resources flow toward things that compound—health, learning, meaningful relationships.
Your Outputs Create Return Loops
You share, contribute, and invest in ways that come back to you in trust, reputation, or growth.
Example: Mentoring a younger colleague → builds loyalty → strengthens your own leadership → opens doors later.
You Design for Compounding, Not Consumption
Open loops consume. Closed loops compound.
Learning, reputation, and relationships all behave like flywheels if you treat them right.
The result is a life that doesn’t just avoid burnout—it feeds itself.
The Personal Flywheel
Here’s a visual metaphor that’s guided me for years:
Every action either:
Leaks energy (open loop)
Reinforces energy (closed loop)
A simple example:
Open loop: Scrolling Twitter for an hour → short dopamine hit → regret → no return.
Closed loop: Spending an hour writing a thoughtful post → builds clarity → earns trust → creates opportunities → motivates more writing.
Multiply that over months and years, and the gap becomes life-defining.
Open Loop Humans vs. Closed Loop Humans
You’ve met both. Maybe you’ve dated both.
Open Loop Humans:
Drama follows them like a weather system.
Everything is about them.
They “use up” rooms, relationships, and jobs.
They take, take, take—and the world eventually takes back.
Closed Loop Humans (Mutualists):
Rooms feel calmer after they enter.
They invest in people without keeping score.
They know their reputation is a compounding asset.
They “leave places better than they found them.”
This isn’t about sainthood. It’s about designing your life so that being around you feels like a net positive.
Practical Mutualist Habits for Personal Life
If you want to shift from open loop to closed loop living, here’s the starter kit:
1. Close Your Energy Loops
Audit your week: Which activities drain vs. reinforce you?
Start by cutting one leaky loop—a toxic conversation, a mindless habit, an endless doom-scroll.
2. Invest in Asymmetric Relationships
Spend more time with people who compound your energy: mentors, collaborators, truth-tellers, friends who leave you inspired.
If a relationship is purely extractive (yours or theirs), fix it—or exit.
3. Shift from Goals to Systems
Goals are open loop—they end when you “get there.”
Systems are closed loop—they keep generating wins and clarity without a finish line.
Ex: “Run a marathon” (goal) vs. “Run 3x a week” (system).
4. Create Return-on-Generosity
Give in ways that naturally circle back: share knowledge, connect people, mentor without ego.
Mutualist living thrives on positive-sum dynamics.
5. Build Rituals of Reflection
Weekly or monthly check-ins: What loops am I closing? What loops am I leaving open?
Most people never pause to ask this. That’s why they wake up burned out.
The Mutualist Mindset Shift
Here’s the big unlock: Closed loop living is not about being selfless—it’s about being strategically self-full.
When you live this way:
Opportunities find you.
Burnout becomes rare.
Your identity isn’t fragile—it’s reinforced by real relationships and impact.
And here’s the kicker: Closed loop living scales.
Mutualist leaders build companies people love to work for.
Mutualist friends create networks that catch them when life punches.
Mutualist partners build relationships that survive stress and change.
From Personal to Global
If enough people shift to closed loop living, society itself starts to look like Mutualism.
Less extraction → more circulation.
Less zero-sum → more compounding trust.
Fewer Zuck-style “growth at all costs” stories → more flywheels that leave the world better than they found it.
Open loops eventually close—but Mutualists close them on purpose, with intention, and leave a surplus behind.
Your Mutualist Challenge
Here’s a simple exercise to start today:
List three open loops in your life
Energy leaks, toxic dynamics, or extractive habits.
List three closed loops you can strengthen
A person to invest in, a system to reinforce, a ritual to protect.
Act on one loop this week.
Small loops compound. Over time, this is how a life stops being a treadmill and starts being a flywheel.
Closed loop living isn’t just better for you. It makes you a better partner, parent, friend, and leader. It’s how we create the kind of world—personal and collective—that’s worth inheriting.
The loop will close, one way or another. Decide what echoes.
If this resonates, explore more of my writing at Numbers & Letters, or reach out for a consultation to discuss leadership design and systems thinking for your organization.
Sources & inspiration:
Wes Anderson - The Phoenician Scheme
The work of Michael Duncan
Disclaimer/Full Disclosure (You made it!): This blog post was generated with the assistance of AI, with N&L human oversight ensuring accuracy and insight. The thoughts and opinions expressed are our own
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