The 4 burner question

The Four Burner Theory


The idea comes from an article by David Sedaris. "One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work." The gist is 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.

Chris Guillebeau recent asked for opinions on this idea and as usual I have something to say. Chris, you may remember, is the guy I featured on Favorite Paths. He has written such books as Art+ Money, Breaking Out of The 9-5 and How to Get Your Message To The World.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the quote that goes something like, what does it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and yet loose himself.

Is it worth ruining our health, or losing our family and friends for success (whatever that means)? From personal experiences, I know it is necessary to turn off one of those four burners. It is impossible to maintain all four areas of activity the same intensity at the same time

When my children were small, I was taking a class, involved with scouts and a lot of other things. Someone asked me to do just one more thing and I wound up in the hospital. All of a sudden, the important things I felt I had to do became insignificant. After that experience I said, “Now I know why there are only twenty-four hours in a day. That is all we can humanly handle.”

At that stage of life, my family required a lot of attention but in later years, the children went off to school, got married, and developed their own problems. Maybe that class I wanted to take could have waited until the children were older. Scouts on the other hand moved to the front burner.

If one is single, divorced or widowed, they may want to throw themselves into their job and work out at the gym to forget about involvement with others. That might be what is important to them at the time. Retirees or young singles may want to serve as missionaries, armed services or travel and put family and friends on the back burner for a time. Somewhere in between family or friends might be far more important. Sometimes health, or lack of, becomes more important than all of the other three. I conclude that it is highly unlikely that success can come from cooking on all four burners at the same time but each has its turn.