It’s funny how you bump into things that actually change the way you move. For years, I was that guy running on ten different tracks all at once. Side hustles, big projects at the main gig, trying to fix up the house—you name it, I was doing it. The problem was, I was moving fast but not really going anywhere. Everything was scattered. I had a huge list of half-done things and a really short list of finished ones. I felt completely depleted, always pouring energy into too many separate buckets.
My First Toss of the Coins
I hit a real wall back in 2018. I had just taken a massive swing at merging two different companies’ systems for a client, and it was a total disaster. Everything was fighting everything else. The tech, the people, the schedules—a complete mess. I was sitting there late one night, totally burnt out, and I saw this old, dusty book my grandfather had left behind. It was one of those translated I Ching guides. I never touched that stuff, honestly. I always thought it was too mystical, too much flowery language.
But I was desperate. I needed a different angle, anything. So, I grabbed three old pennies—shiny, not historical or anything—and I started throwing them on the desk. I was asking the universe, “Look, I’m trying to bring these two businesses together, and it’s turning into a civil war. What am I missing?”
I threw the coins six times, carefully marking down the lines. I went back to the book and flipped to the resulting hexagram. It was number 45. I wrote that number down right at the top of my notepad.
Wrestling with the “Gathering Together” Idea
The name of Hexagram 45 was “Gathering Together.” The language in the book was dense, talking about “the King approaching the Temple” and “offering sacrifice.” But I forced myself to simplify it. I kept reading and rereading the core message. It wasn’t about big rituals; it was about focusing the intention and consolidating the resources. It was a direct hit to my scattered life.
I realized my big problem wasn’t lack of effort; it was the lack of a central meeting point. I was giving 10% here, 10% there, and none of those small investments were connecting. Hexagram 45 was screaming at me to stop scattering seeds and start building a storage shed.
I didn’t drop the book, but I did drop the fancy talk. I started keeping a new kind of journal, and it was all about that number 45.
The 45 Hexagram Daily Logbook
This wasn’t some deep, philosophical diary. It was a simple breakdown of every major decision I had to make that day, and I applied the “45 Rule” to it. I grabbed an old school composition book and dedicated a fresh page to each weekday. At the top of the page, I wrote: Is this a 45 action?
I forced myself to evaluate everything:
- Should I jump into that new crypto market my buddy told me about?
45 Check: No. It scatters my current financial focus. Decline. - Should I hire a new junior developer right now, or should I train the existing team up?
45 Check: Training existing staff consolidates talent and resources. It gathers. Hire later. - Should I keep three separate communication channels open for the client project?
45 Check: No way. That’s fragmentation. Close two, use only the main one.
I started recording the “before” feeling—that chaotic, anxious mess—and the “after” result once I applied the consolidation principle. I wasn’t waiting for the stars to align; I was physically moving people, money, and time into one central column of effort.
Watching the Convergence Happen
It took about three months of this brutal self-discipline, writing down that “45 Check” every single day, to really feel the shift. My projects started slowing down in quantity, but exploding in quality. The big system merger that was failing? I didn’t just fix the errors; I ripped out the non-essential components and forced all necessary data to converge in one master database. I cut the complexity by 60% just by saying “No” to anything that didn’t help the central goal.
I wasn’t an I Ching master, and I still don’t pretend to be. I don’t know the names of all the lines or the proper way to conduct a formal reading. All I know is that simple idea of “Gathering Together” hit me exactly when I needed it. It stopped me from chasing every shiny object and made me collect my own damn self. When you stop scattering your energy, you suddenly find you have mountains of it to spend on the one thing that actually matters. That’s the real wisdom I pulled out of that dusty old book, and it’s the only one I needed.
