I was done. Seriously, absolutely done. The whole damn company felt like one massive, useless treadmill, and I was the idiot running on it in worn-out sneakers. It was early last year, and I had this monster project dumped on my lap. Six months of grinding, skipping meals, shouting matches in meeting rooms that went nowhere. Every day was just fire-fighting. That’s all I ever did: put out small flames only to find a bigger inferno waiting when I turned around. I couldn’t sleep. My wife told me I looked like a ghost.
The final straw was this huge, embarrassing presentation. We messed it up. Totally choked. And the worst part was, I couldn’t even tell you why anymore. We had the data, we had the plan, but somewhere in the sprint, everything just got tangled up, like old fishing line. I walked out of that office building at 2 AM, stared up at the concrete jungle, and felt this hollow pit in my stomach. I knew, right then, I was going to quit. Not just the job, maybe everything. I needed to see a way out, but my brain was just static.
The Accidental Pull of the Book
I got home and threw my laptop bag across the room. It hit the old bookshelf that my dad built. Didn’t hurt the shelf, but it knocked a few books askew. One of them fell off—this beaten-up copy of the I Ching that had been sitting there since college. I picked it up, intending to just chuck it back, but I started flipping through the pages. I hadn’t touched it in like ten years, probably thinking it was just some hippy nonsense.
I needed a straight-up answer about what to do next. Should I quit? Should I move? Should I burn the whole place down? I went into the kitchen, grabbed three random coins—a quarter, a dime, and a nickel—and sat down at the table. I didn’t bother looking up the proper method. I just thought: ask the question, throw the coins. Simple as that.
I asked, loud enough for the dog to hear, “What the hell am I supposed to do about this mess?”
- I threw the coins six times, marking down the head or tails.
- The result came out clear as day: Hexagram Twenty.
I looked it up in the dusty old book. Its name: Kuan. Contemplation. Viewing. Suddenly, I felt like a complete moron. I was looking for a big, strong, immediate answer, like “Go right!” or “Take all the money and run!” and instead, the damn book told me to… wait and look. Nothing was moving. It was like I’d been running full speed into a brick wall, and the universe was telling me to hit the brakes and just observe.
Stopping the Damn Spin Cycle
That little hexagram, Hexagram 20, didn’t give me the escape route I wanted, but it gave me a directive: pause and observe. No action. Zero reaction. I decided to try it. What the hell did I have to lose?
The next day, I changed everything I was doing:
- I stopped arguing with the project lead, Greg. When he started his usual passive-aggressive nonsense, I just listened, nodded, and wrote down exactly what he said. No defense.
- I stopped trying to fix every little bug immediately. I let the developers talk about the problems first, letting the chaos settle, before I even opened my mouth.
- I stopped going to the break room to vent. I just sat at my desk, watching the interactions between the team, noting who spoke to whom, and when.
I was acting like a tourist in my own life. I was a passive observer, letting the environment just be what it was. For two weeks, I did nothing but look. And I mean really look, not just skim over things while thinking about my next comeback.
The View From The Mountain Top
The book talked about viewing the world like a man standing on a high mountain, letting the wind blow over him. Once I shut up and just watched, the whole picture finally clicked. The complexity wasn’t in the code or the plan. It was in the human dynamics.
Greg, the project lead? He wasn’t malicious. He was terrified. He was overloading us because his boss was overloading him. The constant fighting wasn’t about the work; it was about two burned-out people fighting for control they didn’t have. Once I started listening instead of fighting, he actually opened up.
The huge presentation failure? It wasn’t my fault, or his. It was the sales team’s fault, who’d constantly sent us conflicting requirements, and no one on the technical side had been calm enough to see the pattern. It wasn’t a technical flaw; it was a communication breakdown—and all I had to do was stop shouting long enough to draw the connection.
I didn’t quit. Instead, armed with nothing but observational notes from my two weeks of Hexagram 20 duty, I walked into the big meeting and didn’t talk about what went wrong, but how we all interacted. I didn’t blame anyone. I just showed them the patterns I’d drawn up: who talked to whom, who felt unheard. We looked at the environment, the whole damn mess, instead of just the symptoms. It was like switching the light on in a dark room.
That one stupid coin toss didn’t give me the answer; it gave me the one thing I desperately lacked: the direction to shut up and just look. The peace came not from leaving the chaos, but from finally seeing it clearly. It worked. I’m still there, and the project is running smoother than ever because I finally stopped pushing the damn treadmill and just watched the machine working.
