Loop in Three

Draw 3 changing variables and see if the third genuinely feeds back to the first; if not, it's just a chain.

You keep having the same rough week: you sleep badly, so you lean on afternoon coffee, so you lie awake at midnight, so you sleep badly again. When you complain about it, you describe it as a list of separate problems. But something about the way it repeats makes you suspect the pieces are connected, and you want a fast way to check before you start fixing things at random.

Loop in Three is a quick sketch test. The cue is any situation where several things keep changing together and you suspect they feed each other. The operation: pick three variables that actually change (sleep quality, coffee intake, bedtime alertness), draw an arrow from the first to the second and the second to the third, then try to close the third back to the first. If the last arrow genuinely holds, meaning late alertness really does wreck tomorrow's sleep, you have a candidate loop and interventions anywhere on the circle can matter. If it will not close, you have a one-way chain, and you should fix the front of the chain instead of chasing the tail. Do not force closure just to make the drawing satisfying; a chain treated as a loop leads you to intervene where nothing returns.