Hello, this is Post #17 - The 4 burner theory! Sorry I didn’t post this on Tuesday. This week has been pretty hectic at work and with Christmas around the corner I’ve been running around doing with all these holiday errands. I’ve also been designing the photobooth template for one of my family's Christmas parties this year that you can see by clicking here. Isn’t my lola (grandma in English) beautiful? Anyways, I digress; today’s post I discuss something not too many people delve too deeply into. If you want to be successful there are four areas where you need to manage your time to determine how far you will rise.
Have you ever heard of the four burner theory? It goes like this: imagine that the time you spend each time can be divided into four stove top burners.
Each burner will represent on these major areas of our lives: family, friends, work and health (both mental and physical). Now the theory goes that in order to be successful you
can only have three of the four burners on at one time. Also, if you want to be super successful you have to cut off two of the burners. It’s a rather simplistic but very true
(in my experience) way of looking at your ambitions and how to achieve your goals: life is full of trade-offs. If you want to succeed in your work and marriage then your friends
and health may have to pay the price (I mean their burners, not literally!). If you want to succeed as a parent and be healthy, you will have to temper your career ambitions. You
can also try to find harmony and distribute your time equally amongst the four burners, but you will have to accept that you will never excel at anything.
Personally, I like to subscribe to another way of applying the four burner theory when it comes to my life: your life can be divided into seasons where how brightly each burner is running depends on the season. For example, when you are in school all your focus on are your friends, family and health - not so much work as you are too busy studying and having fun. Once you graduate, you are probably going to turn up your work burner when you find a job as you are now ready to start making money and turn down your family burner as work will now start consuming most of your time. As you start to settle down and want to start a family maybe you will turn down the work burner and start turning up the family burner. I’ve thought a lot about where I am in regards to the four burner theory and I’ve realized I’ve turned my friends and family burners way way down. My current goal is to be super successful in my work, health and immediate family so I haven’t been spending too much time with friends and have been missing out on extended family gatherings. Unfortunately, that’s just the reality of following your dreams. You can’t have everything and it was naive of me to think so. Fortunately the friends I do keep in touch with understand that right now, I need to do this. It’s not that I don’t miss seeing them, but I’m currently in the season for producing the best work of my life and I need to see this through before I can turn my friends burner back up.
I should mention the other ways you can approach this burner theory:
- Seasons idea - which I already went over
- Oursource - This is where you get others to fulfill the time you need to maintain your burners. For example, sitters for your kids to keep the family burner running and hiring employees to keep the work burner up. Unfortunately, doing this means you are not getting the most out of that area of your life as you are no longer present while someone else is keeping the burner up
- Constraints - This is where you try to maximize best uses of your time in whatever activity you are doing. You need to realize that you are not operating at your full potential and think of ways to be more efficient. For example, if you are writing a book and you only have an hour, try to think of ways you can work to very best of your ability for that hour such as eliminating distractions and having a coffee before you start.
The four burner theory has taught me that nobody likes being told they can’t have it all but everyone has constraints on their time time and energy. Every choice has a cost. Which burners have you cut off?