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The concept of the four burners came to me, first, from James Clear in this article.

If you read the foot notes of this blog, you will understand the four burners theory came from somewhere but nobody knows quite where.

There are many ways to think about the problem of “work life balance” but the four-burner theory is a pretty good place to start.

In affect you want to think of a gas stove with four burners. Each burner represents a different area of your life, health, work, family, friends. Turn up one burner, lose gas on the rest, turn up one burner, compensate by turning down another.

Over fire one burner, lose another. Over fire one burner too much and lose all of the burners.

We can associate with these simple analogies because we knows if work turns up too high, then health disappears.

We can certainly understand it if we work, will we spend less time with our friends and family, so this all seems quite straight forward and simple ay?

The problem with accepting this format is that you have to appreciate that you can’t possibly be good at everything.

Just tonight I was giving Louis a lift to his football training and we were discussing the possibility of him becoming a professional triathlete.

He appreciated the fact that he would have to work during the phase where he was trying to become a professional athlete, but also train 20-25 hours per week.

Louis is now (as well as being one of my best friend Tim’s son) my daughter’s Boyfriend.

Louis then realised to work part-time would take him about 20 hours and to train for 25 hours a week would take him to 45 hours and to recover and do some other things that he wants to do, would pretty much use up all of the time that he had before he had seen his Girlfriend or any of the rest of his family and friends.

Louis was harshly introduced to the four burners theory at 16 years of age, we had a discussion about what it was like to want to be the best in the world and what sacrifice it would take to be the best in the world – at anything.

Last week I wrote about after the burn out, it basically relates to the fact that I came back from holiday and entered into the most ridiculous and crazy schedule. From a distance it looked like I could manage to do that, turn up the work burner for a little while but basically, I turned the work burner up so high that the health burner went out.

I am prone to this and in James Clear’s article, he provides some strategies for dealing with this, but all with the caveat that they come at a price.

I could outsource more of my work, but then I wouldn’t work. I decided I wanted to continue to work for a long time, so what would be the point in outsourcing even more?

I could accept my constraints and work within more of a system, but that would mean that I was accepting that I wouldn’t reach my full potential and that would frustrate me.

Blog Post Number - 2192