I woke up this morning, flipped open my copy of The I Ching: A Guide to Life?s Turning Points by Brian Browne Walker, and cast my oracle for the day. And wouldn?t you know it?Hexagram 18, ?Work on What Has Been Spoiled,? stared back at me for the second day in a row. The judgment? ?Supreme success. It furthers one to cross the great water. Before the starting point, three days. After the starting point, three days.? That?s a mouthful, but the gist hit me hard: sit with what?s broken for three full days before even thinking about fixing it. Don?t rush. Don?t act. Just? look.
I?m not one for sitting still?my mind?s usually racing with code, AI stacks, or the next blog post idea?but this felt like a challenge I couldn?t ignore. Two days in a row with the same hexagram? That?s not coincidence; that?s a nudge. So, I leaned into it, and here?s what I?m unpacking.
Day 1 & 2: The Same Hexagram, The Same Call to Pause Yesterday?s reading paired ?Work on What Has Been Spoiled? with ?The Army? (Hexagram 7), emphasizing perseverance and strength. Today, it shifted to ?The Corners of the Mouth? (Hexagram 27), pointing to nourishment and paying attention to what I seek. You can check the full readings yourself here and here. But what stuck with me was the repetition of Hexagram 18 and its insistence on three days of reflection. The book suggests gazing into the abyss?really examining what?s broken in your life?before clarity emerges on day three. Until then? Do nothing.That?s tough for someone like me. I?m wired to troubleshoot, to debug life like it?s a messy line of code. But this felt different. The timing couldn?t have been more on point?I?ve been out in the desert lately, away from the urban grind, and there?s a solitude here that strips away the noise. It?s just me, the vast emptiness, and this nagging question: what?s spoiled in my world that I?ve been too busy to see? I?ve been using this quiet to observe what?s not working, what?s being covered up by the hustle?like the cracks I?m noticing while pouring my energy into building a model for agroverse.shop. It?s a project that?s got my attention, but this I Ching exercise is forcing me to step back and see the bigger picture.
Mental Models and Memory Overload?A Tech Analogy Here?s where my tech brain kicked in. I started thinking about how the mind works under load, and it reminded me of my trusty MacBook Pro. When I?ve got too many apps open?say, Chrome with 20 tabs, a code editor, and some AI model running in the background?the hard drive starts grinding. You can hear it struggling with all the reads and writes, desperate to keep up. That?s what my head feels like sometimes, especially when I?m juggling too many mental models to navigate life?s chaos.I tried a little experiment to test this. Ever tried holding random numbers in your head? Start with one?it?s easy. Add another, then another. By the time you hit seven, most people (myself included) start feeling the strain. Your breath gets shallow, your shoulders tense up, and beyond seven? Forget it. Numbers start slipping out of memory like sand through your fingers. There?s a classic paper on this by George A. Miller, ?The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two? (check it out here), that dives into the limits of our working memory. It?s a real thing?our brains can only handle so much at once.
Now, contrast that with what the I Ching is asking: hold just one thing in your mind. Not seven, not even two. One broken thing, one spoiled piece of your life, and keep it there for three days straight. When your mind wanders (and trust me, it will?mine?s already off daydreaming about blog analytics), you gently pull it back. No multitasking, no problem-solving. Just sit with it. That?s the opposite of how I usually operate, and honestly, it?s kind of unnerving.
Key Observation: Solitude as a Debugging Tool?and Urban Gymnastics Out here in the desert, I?m noticing how much of my mental load comes from the short-term frameworks I?ve built to survive urban life. For most folks, that might mean dodging traffic or timing coffee runs. For me, it?s a bit trickier?I?m mainly living out of my car, so the mental and physical gymnastics I?ve gotta juggle are on another level. Think about it: where to park safely, how to keep essentials organized in a tiny space, when and where to recharge (both my devices and myself)?it?s a constant balancing act. Every day in dense urban areas feels like running an obstacle course with no finish line.Here?s a little story that sums it up. This past Thanksgiving, I hit a wall?literally every public toilet was closed. I ended up driving around for two hours along the coast and Highway 1, desperately searching for a spot where a shop was open and the restroom was accessible. I can?t tell you how relieved I felt when I finally found one. It?s not often you?re over-the-moon happy just to find a toilet, but that was definitely one of those occasions. It?s a small thing, but it?s a perfect example of the extra hoops I?ve gotta jump through living this way. Those frameworks are useful, sure, but they?re also noise. Stripping them away in the desert feels like closing unnecessary apps on my laptop?the fan quiets down, and suddenly there?s space to think. Or in this case, to not think?to just observe what?s broken without the urge to fix it right away. I?m seeing gaps in how I approach projects like agroverse.shop, and even in how I?ve been interacting with communities like the TrueSight DAO.
Speaking of TrueSight DAO, I?ve been observing their communication dynamics over WhatsApp in their channel. I?ve also been using it as a sort of dumping ground for my random thoughts?stuff that?s got nothing to do with operations or the DAO?s focus. In hindsight, that probably wasn?t the best idea. It?s just adding to the noise, not the signal. So, I?m stepping back from that, archiving those musings privately instead, and focusing on curating what?s worth sharing.
Reflections for the Day?and a Question for You This whole process has me rethinking how I approach problems, both personal and technical. I?ve been building an AI stack to help compile pattern matches for my blog (you can read about that journey here), and I?m realizing that less noise means more focus. Stepping away from overloading channels like TrueSight DAO?s WhatsApp with unrelated thoughts is part of that. So is this three-day I Ching exercise?sitting with what?s broken instead of rushing to patch it up, even as I navigate the unique challenges of living out of my car.So, I?m wondering: what?s the ?spoiled? thing in your life that you?ve been avoiding? Have you ever taken the time?three days, or even three hours?to just sit with it, no agenda, no fixes? And if you?ve got your own version of ?urban gymnastics? to deal with, how do you find space to step back and reflect? I?d love to hear how you tackle the broken pieces, or if the idea of staring into the abyss sounds as daunting to you as it does to me. Drop a comment or shoot me a message?I?m all ears.
For now, I?ve got one more day of this experiment. Let?s see what clarity day three brings?or if I crack under the weight of doing nothing. Stay tuned.