Well Mud Uneatable
Updated 2026-08-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Well Mud Uneatable comes from the I Ching hexagram Jing, describing an old well that has silted up so that its water can no longer be drunk and even birds no longer visit. Its core proposition is that assets are not permanently valuable: without continuous maintenance they depreciate and can become net liabilities. The key qualifier is that maintenance is a recurring cost rather than a one-time repair, so budgeting for it as a permanent line item is part of owning the asset at all.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Decay audit: identify the accumulating silt that is gathering inside each of your core assets. - Maintenance budgeting: treat upkeep as a permanent cost rather than as a single one-off repair. - Liability check: ask when a neglected asset started costing you more than it actually returns.
Anchor fast decisions
Assets generate value only while the systems that support them stay functional, and those systems degrade continuously through use, drift, and changing context. Degradation is slow and invisible until it crosses a threshold where the asset stops working, at which point the cost of restoration is far higher than the accumulated maintenance would have been.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zh.wikisource.orghttps://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%91%A8%E6%98%93/%E4%BA%95verified
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