The Draining Well: Six Months of Organizational Chaos
Man, I was completely wrecked just a few months back. I mean, totally drained. I had taken on this gigantic project at work—revamping the entire internal knowledge base. We’re talking about thousands of pages of documentation, all scattered across old SharePoints and Google Drives. When I started, I figured, okay, map the content, structure it logically, migrate it to the new platform, done. Easy enough, right?
Nope. That was naive.
What actually happened was six months of pure, unadulterated organizational whiplash. I’d start building out the template for Team A, and halfway through, Team B’s director would decide they needed an entirely different categorization system. I spent weeks learning the new documentation software, only for the CIO to announce we were switching platforms again because the old one “didn’t scale.” I felt like I was literally standing in one place, constantly digging a hole, only to have someone walk up behind me and fill it with sand the moment I turned around.
My stress levels were through the roof. I started thinking about quitting almost daily. I’d get up at 5 AM, try to squeeze in a few hours of solid work before the office political crap started, and then by 3 PM, I was staring at the screen, totally paralyzed. The frustration wasn’t about the volume of work; it was the constant inconsistency. Every effort I threw at the problem felt wasted, leaky, and superficial. It was like I was running a marathon only to find the finish line moved every five minutes.
Casting the Lines: Recognizing the Faulty Rope
I reached a point where I just couldn’t power through anymore. I had run out of brute-force motivation. This is usually when I grab my old copy of the I Ching, not for some mystical prophecy, but just to force myself to look at the situation from a totally different angle. I needed a mirror for my chaos.
I focused on the question: “How do I maintain my function and output when the external environment is fundamentally unreliable?”
The result: Hexagram 48, The Well (Jǐng). The unchanging lines focused my mind right away. This Hexagram talks about the fundamental source of sustenance. The well itself is always there; it is reliable, deep, and steady. But if the rope breaks, or the bucket is leaky, or the well is neglected and clogged, people starve.
The advice hit me like a splash of cold water. My work ethic wasn’t the problem. My quality wasn’t the problem. My depth of commitment wasn’t the problem. My effort was the reliable well. The broken rope and the leaky buckets? That was all the external noise—the management changes, the platform migrations, the conflicting demands from different departments. I was fixated on fixing the buckets when I should have just been ensuring the water flowing from the well was pure.
The Practice Log: Cleaning Out the Source
I immediately changed my approach. I stopped fighting the external forces. I implemented a strict, three-step Hexagram 48 strategy:
- Ignore the Bucket Builders: I stopped attending all those optional meetings where people debated which software tool was best. I muted the Slack channels discussing future platforms. I focused 100% on what I could control: the documentation content itself.
- Deep Digging Only: Instead of building 50% of 10 different sections, I decided to build one section—the core system architecture documentation—to 100% perfection. I made it concise, verifiable, and structurally flawless, regardless of where it would ultimately live. I treated this one section as the pure water from the well.
- Maintain the Liner: I put serious time into defining standards that were platform-agnostic. I wrote a strict style guide for future content creators. This was me fixing the well’s lining, making sure that even if the external tools changed, the internal quality control was absolute.
I basically withdrew my energy from the superficial chaos and redirected it entirely toward depth and quality in a single, focused area. I realized the strength of the well isn’t in its visibility, but in its dependable sustenance.
The Strength Found: The Unwavering Foundation
The result was immediate and profound, though not in the way you’d expect. At first, management kept calling me, asking why I hadn’t started on the sales team’s messy files yet. I simply pointed them to the completed core architecture document. I didn’t argue; I just presented the reliable water.
They couldn’t argue with the quality. The sheer depth and organized structure of that one section made it impossible to dismiss.
What happened next was crazy. Instead of forcing their own template on me, the sales director actually asked me to use the architecture team’s new standards for their content. Why? Because the quality I produced was so good, they realized it wasn’t the platform that mattered; it was the structured, consistent output. I had demonstrated the reliability of the source, and suddenly, everyone wanted a drink from that well.
This whole practice showed me something vital: When everything around you is shifting and unreliable, your strength lies not in trying to catch every falling piece, but in retreating to your reliable center. Find your inner well, clean it up, make sure the water is good, and eventually, the people who need real sustenance will figure out how to bring their own bucket.
It was a tough lesson, but now I know. When the obstacles multiply, stop looking outward. Go deeper. Fix your source. That’s true inner strength.
