The Missing Element In The Four Burner Theory

James Clear author of best seller Atomic Habits is a proponent of the Four Burners Theory (a way to look at work-life balance).

But this idea is missing a key component.

Let’s look at it:

Picture a gas cooker with four hobs on it. Each of those four hobs represents one area of your life. For example Work, Health, Family & Friends

The idea is you can have each of the four hobs burning at medium heat at the same time, however, if you wanted to increase the heat on one, which is to say to spend more time and or energy on one of them you'd have to decrease the others.

For example, having a baby means you increase the output on the family hob, and you need to turn down the others. This is true for any endeavour which requires you (voluntarily or not) to reach expert level and full dedication in its pursuit.

The concept holds true for a definitive period of time. Today, you have 24hrs available and a certain level of energy.

However, I do think this concept is missing an important addition.

By only focusing on the output of each hob, the concept is neglecting the fuel source: the canister. Because although we are limited on energy in the short term, we can work on increasing the size of our canister over time. For example, if we take care of our physical health we will have more energy to give to our hobbies and family.

Also, the Four Burner Theory sees each of the four hobs as being separate from one another. So you choose to spend energy on say work and that energy is simply used up.

However, there's an argument to be made that the way we spend our energy can refuel the others. Taking care of our physical and mental health will in turn, provide us with additional fuel for our family commitments, hobbies and friends. The same way spending energy on our hobbies gives us more energy for the next workday.

The Four Burner Theory is a good concept of realising you've got a finite amount of energy and time today. Often we falsely believe turning one up will not affect the others. Like increasing your daily work from 8 to 10 hours won’t have an impact on your physical health or won’t take away too much time from your family and friends.

However, neglecting to work on either the canister where the energy is coming from or the recycling of energy from one hob to the others, is limiting ourselves to believing we are left with a fixed amount of energy, which isn't true.

We can change how much energy is available to us over time. It takes conscious effort and careful analysis of what activities fuel us more than others.