The Absolute Grind That Broke Me
Man, I used to think success was all about throwing maximum effort at everything. Like, if I just worked 18 hours a day, eventually something would stick. I was deep into the content creation game, running a small consultancy on the side, and trying to learn Mandarin just because I thought it sounded good on my resume. I was running on fumes for three years straight, always feeling busy, always feeling productive, but my bank account and my happiness levels were sitting right around zero.
I distinctly remember the moment everything crashed. I’d spent eight months building this complex, beautiful software tool. It was meant to automate scheduling for freelancers. I poured every bit of energy, all my savings, and every weekend into it. I launched it feeling like a conquering hero. You know what happened? Four sign-ups in the first month. Two of them were my mom and my college roommate.
I was so angry. I punched a hole in my drywall—seriously. All that sacrifice, all those sleepless nights, and for what? I realized I was spending 90% of my time doing things that felt important but were actually just noise. I was decreasing my life quality but not decreasing the crap work. I needed a system to tell me exactly what to kill.
Stumbling Over Hexagram 41 (Decrease)
I wasn’t looking for ancient wisdom, I was looking for a productivity hack that actually worked. I got into a deep dive on decision-making frameworks, reading everything from Stoicism to management theory. I kept seeing these weird references to the I Ching, especially in books about strategy. I had always dismissed it as fortune-telling nonsense, but I was desperate enough to try anything.
Most books focused on the whole 64 hexagrams, which felt overwhelming. I needed quick, actionable advice. Then I read this old commentary that emphasized focusing on the four key phases of change. That’s where Hexagram 41, Decrease (Sun), smacked me right in the face. The whole concept of 41 is brutal: you reduce what doesn’t work, so that what does work can be amplified. It’s not about losing something good; it’s about voluntarily sacrificing the weak stuff to strengthen the essential stuff.
I figured, okay, forget predicting the future. I’m going to use this as a daily, aggressive audit tool.
The 41 Practice: Getting Clear on What to Kill
My practice started out very simple, almost ritualistic, because I needed the mental break from the chaos. Every morning, before I touched my laptop, I would cast a reading—usually just the three coins, fast and dirty—but I wasn’t asking, “What will happen?” My core question was always rooted in 41:
“For me to achieve X today (or this week), what non-essential effort must be cut or decreased entirely?”
I kept a simple notebook for this. The resulting hexagram wasn’t a forecast; it was an extreme piece of advice on where I needed to ruthlessly apply the principle of Decrease. If the reading was unfavorable for my intended action, I wouldn’t abandon the action, but I would immediately decrease the complexity or the scale of the commitment.
Here are two specific ways I implemented the Decrease mindset:
- The Social Media Trap: I used to spend two hours a day “networking” online. The oracle kept pushing themes related to “the mouth” or “chattering” (sometimes showing Hexagram 23, Splitting Apart). I interpreted this as: “You are spending energy talking instead of doing.” I cut all networking efforts down to 20 minutes a day and focused only on direct client emails. Decrease the noise, increase the focus.
- The Over-Engineering Habit: Whenever I started a new project, I would immediately jump to the most complex solution (just like that failed software tool). I started asking 41 about complexity. If I got a reading suggesting “obstruction” or “difficulty” (like Hexagram 3, Difficulty at the Beginning), I immediately forced myself to strip 50% of the planned features. Decrease the scope, increase the likelihood of completion.
The Payoff: Energy Flows Where Effort Stops
It sounds strange, but the moment I stopped trying to be everywhere and do everything, things started moving. It wasn’t magic. It was simply the brutal effectiveness of forced limitation. The 41 framework became my filter for obligation and distraction.
Before the 41 guide, my life looked like this:
Spending Energy On:
- Building secondary features nobody asked for.
- Responding immediately to every email or message.
- Attending meetings that had no clear agenda.
After embracing the decrease philosophy:
Energy Was Redirected To:
- The single, highest-value task for three hours, uninterrupted.
- Scheduling specific times to respond to communications, usually late in the day.
- Refusing any meeting without a clear, written objective beforehand.
I didn’t suddenly get rich, but I regained my time and my sanity. That feeling of running on a hamster wheel vanished. I finally understood that most of the effort I was putting in was just padding—stuff I was doing to feel busy, not to be effective. The I Ching, specifically through the brutal lens of Hexagram 41, didn’t predict my future; it gave me permission to stop doing the stuff that was actively holding me back. It was the clearest advice I’d ever received on eliminating inefficiency, and it was written three thousand years ago. Go figure.
