Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. -Proverbs 23:4 (ESV)
This isn’t a verse I come back to because I’ve mastered it — but because I haven’t. If anything, it’s a mirror. Every time I read it, I see something in me that still needs to be checked.
There are a lot of weeks where I find myself toiling. Not working with peace. Not moving with trust. Just striving. Grinding. Carrying more. Doing more. And most of the time, if I’m really honest, it’s rooted in fear. Not fear of public failure. But that quiet fear that if I don’t do it, no one will. That if I stop pushing, God might not show up. So I work harder. Press in. Try to stay in control. Fear gets me moving. Pride shows up when it works. It’s a brutal cycle.
My mouth might even say, “Look what God did.” But my heart... and my calendar... and my stress levels... say “Look what I did.”
That’s the tension — I want God to get the glory, but I live like it’s up to me. And yet, when I look back, the moments where God showed up the clearest were the times I did the least. When I had nothing left. When I was out of ideas, out of strength, out of cleverness — and He moved anyway.
I don’t always know what to do with that. But I know the difference in my spirit between striving in my own strength... and walking in His.
Be discerning enough to desist. You and I weren’t made to live exhausted, fearful, and proud. We were made to walk with God — humble, dependent, and steady. So here are some questions to sit with this week:
> Is fear driving any part of what I’m building right now?
> Where has pride crept in and made me crave the credit?
> Have I confused God’s direction with my own ambition?
> What would it look like to truly trust Him—even when nothing’s moving?
You’re not alone in this. Let’s be discerning. Let’s stop when we need to. Check our hearts. And let’s stay about the King’s business.
Let me say that again — because we all nod along when we hear it, but few of us actually live like it: You don’t have to burn out to scale up.
Law 7 of UnbreakableOS is called Asymmetric Endurance for a reason. It’s the law that protects you from getting crushed by your own success. As your business grows, your daily workload should shrink. Not stay flat. Not grow with it. Shrink.
Most owners carry more as the business grows. More decisions. More complexity. More of everything. That’s not endurance. That’s a countdown to burnout. Asymmetric Endurance is about building a business engine — through systems, automation, and reporting — that runs without you being the motor.
When I stepped into Sherman Portfolios, the business had just gone through an acquisition and needed to be rebuilt from the studs. The core domains — Operations, Finance, and Growth — all needed structure, clarity, and scalability. There were no real systems in place, no automation, and no rhythm to how the business ran. We spent a full year doing the hard work:
> Building operational workflows > Automating repetitive tasks > Creating financial visibility > Setting clear goals> Replacing chaos with consistency
Once the engine was in place, we made a big move: we shifted to a four-day workweek. Not to make a statement, but because I believe a well-run business should give time back — not take more of it. The question was — could we still grow?
compared to the same period last year:
+40% revenue growth and +129% EBITDA
Same team. One less day. Better results. That wasn’t by accident. It’s the fruit of Asymmetric Endurance.
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If you want to start building your own engine, here’s what to do this week:
1. Simplify your priorities.
Assign one annual goal to each of your three core domains: Operations, Growth, and Finance. Then break each one into monthly priorities. One focus per month, per domain. That’s it.
You can download the Unbreakable Cycles™ worksheet here. Check out Volume 6 for a more detailed overview of how the cycles work and setting goals.
2. Automate one thing this week.
Pick one daily or weekly task that’s still manual — like invoicing, follow-ups, scheduling, or customer onboarding — and get rid of it with a tool like Stripe, Mailchimp, Hubspot, or Intercom.
Ask yourself: What process in my business still depends on me — or someone else — doing it by hand that shouldn’t?
3. Require a UBR (Unbreakable Business Review)
If you’ve got leaders, ask each domain lead to send a weekly or monthly report:
> 70% narrative (what’s happening and why)
> 30% numbers (MTD, QTD, YTD, and Big 3 goal progress)
This builds trust and gives you visibility — without requiring you to be everywhere at once.
Download the Unbreakable Business Review™ example here to implement with your leaders.
4. Track your time—for one week.
Download the Asymmetric Endurance™ Time Tracker to start logging your hours in three categories:
> Operations – the engine: how the business runs
> Growth – the fuel: how the business expands
> Finance – the money: how the business stays healthy
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Step away. For a week. If you really want to level up, step away for a month.
Blackout your involvement. Don’t answer texts. Don’t check email. Just watch. What breaks? That’s what needs to be systemized, delegated, or automated. This is what Asymmetric Endurance looks like in real life: A business that grows while your personal involvement decreases. Revenue up. Owner involvement down. That’s the goal. That’s the design.
Let the team run the engine. Let the systems do the work. And lead from a place of clarity — not chaos. Grow the business. Get your time back.
So why are you working like you are?
In the early 1900s, Henry Ford changed the world with the assembly line. It was revolutionary — an elegant system designed to take something complex, like building a car, and break it down into small, repeatable tasks.
Work was divided, specialized, and tightly timed. The result? More cars, built faster, at a fraction of the cost. It transformed the American economy. But here’s the thing: it worked because the work was physical, repetitive, and clearly defined. You didn’t need creativity, insight, or strategy. You needed hands.
Cal Newport says it best in his book, Slow Productivity:
Knowledge work isn’t about tightening bolts. It’s about solving problems. Making decisions. Synthesizing information. Managing complexity. It requires energy, margin, and clarity — not speed and repetition. But we’ve applied the assembly line logic anyway. We stack calendars with back-to-back meetings, expecting ideas to move as fast as machinery. We expect linear, visible output from a kind of work that doesn’t move in straight lines. And it’s crushing us.
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In Slow Productivity, Newport offers three counterintuitive principles that speak directly to this broken system:
1. Do fewer things.
Too much work means shallow work. When leaders and teams are overloaded, they lose the ability to go deep on what matters. Narrow the focus, increase the quality.
2. Work at a natural pace.
Knowledge work ebbs and flows. Ideas take time. Insight can’t be forced on a schedule. Stop expecting meaningful output to look like a conveyor belt.
3. Obsess over quality.
Instead of chasing metrics or motion, aim for depth and impact. Slow productivity isn’t laziness — it’s craftsmanship.
If you lead others or run a business, you’re not just managing tasks. You’re shaping culture. You’re defining what “enough” looks like. And chances are, the pace you’re modeling is setting the tone for everyone else.
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If it’s the former, slow down. Think deeply. Do less. And let the quality speak for itself.