Good question, made me think. At any given moment, except the short period of ramp-up, I can tell whether I'm "on" or "off" - from the inside it feels like it's binary. But it's true that on the outside my success varies on a continuous scale, because when I'm "off" I still have some tricks up my sleeve. But these tricks require a lot of willpower to use. When I'm "on", everybody likes me and willpower becomes irrelevant. Maybe it's about dynamics: when I'm close to "on", I gravitate toward "on" as I get more validation from others, but when I'm close to "off", I slide toward "off" for the same reason.