Follow Up On The Four Burner Theory

Last week I made a blog post in which I talked about the Four Burner Theory.  To tell the story in a nutshell, Chris Guillibeau was being interviewed by Jocelyn at The99Percent.com and he was asked about a comment writer David Sedaris made concerning the Four Burner Theory. 

The Four Burner Theory is the idea that you have four “burners” in life consisting of family, friends, work, and health.  Sedaris suggested that in order to be successful, you have to ‘shut off” one of the burners.  If you want to be really successful, you have to shut off two.  After explaining this, Jocelyn asked Chris if he thought Sedaris’ comment was true.  Chris struggled to answer the question, and he has thought a lot about the question ever since the interview.

I wrote about the Four Burner Theory and Chris’ reaction to it last week, but as I was writing, I started to really give the question some thought.  Honestly, it freaked me out a little bit.  When I applied the Four Burner Theory to my life, I began to understand that I have a nice balance in life, but no great success.  In relation to the Four Burner Theory, I am one of those people who lives a moderately successful life, but not exceptional.  That bothered me.

For the past week, I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the Four Burner Theory.  I’ve been trying to come to grips with the fact that if the Four Burner Theory is accurate and David Sedaris is right, then my default belief that “you can have it all in life” is wrong.  Coming to the conclusion that I am wrong is not hard.  I do it quite often.  But before I admit that I’m wrong, I want to make sure that that is the case.

After thinking about it now for over a week, I don’t think I am wrong.  Here’s why:

When I first read Chris Guillibeau’s blog post, I accepted that the Four Burner Theory was accurate.  But after giving it considerable thought, I don’t think it is accurate at all.  In fact, I reject the premise behind the theory on two grounds.

First, the Four Burner Theory doesn’t cover everything in life.  The four areas it covers are important, but not all encompassing.  For instance, I want to spend my life writing, racing, and pursuing the goals on my Goddard List.  Since I don’t want to do these things for a living, none of them are covered by the four burners.  So right there, the Four Burner Theory is flawed.

Second, the Four Burner Theory, at least as it was presented in Chris’ blog post, is stagnant.  It assumes that you have to cut off one burner long-term in order to be successful in other areas.  But life is dynamic.  It is constantly changing.  Today’s focus might be on your career (work) while tomorrow’s will be family.  This weekend, you may be focused on getting together with friends, but in the process you may put your health goals (eat right, exercise, etc) on hold.  Your focus may change by the day (or even the hour), but that doesn’t mean that you are “shutting off” a burner.

The Four Burner theory is too limited in scope to be really useful.  It takes too narrow of a view of life and then assumes that your focus in life remains relatively unchanged over time.  It views decisions you make about your life as long-term even though in reality, we all are constantly making decisions and many of those decisions contradict other decisions we’ve made in the past.

I’ve come to grips with the Four Burner Theory.  It threw me for a loop after I read Chris’ blog post, but I think I understand it better now.  In fact, I think I understand it well enough to reject the premise that it is based on.

Even so, what about the conclusion I reached that I am moderately successful in many areas of my life, but not exceptionally successful in any one area?  That’s not good.  That’s not what I’m shooting for in life.  I’m afraid I’ve gotten comfortable over the years and have settled for a good life when a great life is still out there for the taking.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not complaining about my life or my lifestyle.  I am an extremely fortunate guy.  But that doesn’t mean that I am content.

In recent years, I’ve gotten side-tracked from my goals.  I know I need to earn a living, but I’ve spent too much time and effort chasing the money.  It is a long-standing problem with me.  I like to think that once I’m making enough money (the amount is always changing), then I’ll do all of the things that are supposedly important to me.  As a result, I spend my time chasing money instead working on my goals.  It’s an easy trap to fall into (at least for me), but it needs to stop.

I don’t have any big announcements to make right now, but I am working on a plan I can follow to get my priorities straight.  I still believe that you can have it all in life, but in order to do that, you have to be clear about what it is you really want.  I’ve gotten a little off track in that regard.  I need to do some thinking and planning to get back on track.  As always, I’ll keep you posted right here.