The Four Burners Theory

What exactly is the Four Burners Theory?

The Four Burners Theory provides a straightforward method to consider your life duties in terms of Family, Friends, Health, and Work. We only have 24 hours in a day, therefore we have a limited amount of time and energy to devote to these important aspects of our life. Fortunately, under the four burners idea, there is an alternate way to work-life balance that may also help you achieve improved productivity, health, happiness, and contentment. This is how it works.

Assume your life is represented by a stove with four burners. Each burner represents a key region of your life.

1. Your family is represented by the first burner
2. Your Friends are the second burner
3. The third burner is your health
4. Your Work is the fourth burner

The Four Burners Theory says that “in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful, you have to cut off two.”

Which two would you pick?

Of course our first desire is to become really successful BUT it’s a difficult decision! If you decide that family and career are more essential, you must forego your friends and health. If you decide that family and friends are more important than your career and health, you must forego your career and health. Overall, the philosophy revolves around trade-offs.

An Approach to the Theory of the Four Burners

The consequences of the four burners hypothesis, may appear excessive, since it implies that you would have to cut off crucial elements of your life. This does not have to be the case in practice.

Here’s one outlook to consider the four burners notion. Consider yourself a juggler who can keep in motion many balls while only holding two balls in your hands at any given moment. These balls represents a different aspect of your life – in this case, each of the ‘four burners’. The trick is that you can’t keep a hold on more than two balls at a time but the balls rolling in air also have your attention so that they don’t fall!

A variety of situations might play out and they will differ for every other person. For example, some people can juggle more balls or hold more balls.

If you decide to constantly hold one ball or let one go, you would feel a loss of balance. Thus, the crucial point here is that you don’t have to entirely hold on to or shut off the key sections, but that does not mean that you keep juggling in life. So, at times, we must recognize that success and work-life balance cannot coexist due to a limit in the time and energy we have.

So, how should you manage your ambitions?

Cultivating a healthy ambition is all about regulating and controlling your four burners. Some tools that may be useful include:

1. Delegate responsibilities
2. Identifying what is important
3. Life’s Seasons 
4. Accept Constraints

Delegate responsibilities

If you don’t have time to perform one of the burners, why not hire someone to do it for you?

For example, if you normally spend time picking and purchasing food at the supermarket on a weekly basis, you may choose an alternate online food delivery option to your house instead. This will save you time, which you can now devote to other “burners” in your life. Some chores, however, cannot be outsourced, such as exercising, but those that can help you save a lot of time.

Identifying what is important

If we don’t know what is genuinely essential to us against what isn’t, it will be much more difficult to say yes to what is vital and no to what appears to be urgent but isn’t. While I can’t devote all of my time to one burner without consequences, I can make the most of the time I do have for each one. The easiest approach to get started is to concentrate on the most critical items.

Life’s Seasons 

A third method for managing your four burners is to divide your life into seasons. What if, instead of always striving for an ideal work-life balance, you divided your life into seasons that concentrated on a certain area? The significance of your burners may vary throughout time. When you’re in your twenties or thirties and don’t have children, it might be simpler to get to the gym and pursue your work goals. The health and work burners are both on high. After a few years, you may decide to establish a family, and your health burner may suddenly reduce to a steady simmer while your family burner receives more fuel. Another decade passes, and you may rekindle old friendships or follow that business idea you’ve been putting off.

Accept Constraints

Accept your limitations. The question to ask oneself is, “How can I be as successful as possible given a specific set of constraints?” As an example,

This line of questioning draws your attention away from something unfavorable and toward something good (making the most out of what you have) (worrying about never having enough time). It is important to avoid burnout and enjoy each phase as we go through it.

The Conclusion

The Four Burners Theory is one of several approaches to framing life’s many tradeoffs. Whatever lens you choose to see the problem through, you’ll have to constantly alter it, as well as the consequent compromises that allow you to make progress. One of the drawbacks of work-life balance is the requirement of sacrifice for success, which underestimates the huge amount of hours necessary on a daily basis to become a top performer in any area.

The Evolve app is now live globally on Android & Apple, click here to try it for free!