Hypomania is always the goal state of anyone who can achieve it because it is here, between the overly unbridled manic state and the lesser states that are described by words like "interested" and "happy", where the mind of an individual can get some serious work or thinking done. Hypomania can not last forever, but it can last for days, weeks, and even many months with little cessation of activity.
The downside is that there is always a downside and this can come abruptly or creep in slowly as a growing boredom and heigtening depression. Sometimes, the shift in mental gears from one state to another can be no more subtle than an anvil to the skull.
In any case, most of the genius we see done by individuals in various domains of human endeavor happen during hypomanic episodes where the writing of a book or the painting of a grand masterpiece, is done. It is a state of steadily super-human output and the affected individual will shrug off the coming downfall for the glory of the current pace.
Hypomania is a sort of subdued, long-term mania that never reaches the crescendo and connectively unbridled fervor of mania but stays at a constant level of high activity in which all faculties are heightened.
If mania is a searing hot mental ball of activity, then hypomania is a long ellipse of the same energy stretched over a longer, in some cases, much longer, period of time. In my own case, my hypomanic phases can last many months and, during these times, my level of productivity and energy rise sharply.
Though hypomanic states hardly ever yield psychoses nor do they allow individuals to forgo all sleep or rest. Mania, on the other hand, is a short-lived burst during which the connectivity becomes non-productive and overly abrupt.
Hypomanic states can be sustained for almost indefinite periods of time given certain medications or substances though the eventual down-shift in neural metabolic rates typically leads to a much lower level of activity, creativity, and productivity in most individuals. Hypomania is the state in which many composers, philosophers, and thinkers or artists of all breeds, produce.
It is the hypomanic mind that can sustain focus and interest long enough to be able to cohesively string together disparate thoughts or long treatises on this or that subject.
It is the hypomanic mind that can write endlessly, compose without cessation, or paint canvas after canvas. Hypomania is the desired state of artists and mathematicians alike.
It is the workplace and the output; the home for genius and the output of the mind's factory run at a pace that, while reaching its limits, does not necessarily burn it out- at least not soon. Hypomania is steady and long-lived comparatively. It can last days, weeks, or even in many cases, many months.
It is mania stretched out and dampened to a degree that is fairly reasonable in comparison. It is tamped down, restrained, and stretched mania. But, as in all cases of "ups" what goes up and stays up will fall.
Typically, a hypomanic phase can end in an abrupt crash or a slow descent. Either way, it ends at a level trough that is equivalent, in many ways, to the level plateau that was the hypomanic state of elevation.
