The Four Burners Theory Taught Me That I'm Not Superhuman

I first came across the Four Burners Theory by James Clear in 2018.

Over all these years, I have tried to observe the Four Burners Theory in my life. And I would often get off track. Whenever I was off track and when I would eventually recognise it, I would realise that my four burners were not aligned. That I had been spending a lot more energy on one thing over another.

The moment I brought back the framing of the Four Burners Theory, it would become immediately obvious why I was off track in certain dimensions of life.

At the time of writing this, I find myself in a similar place of being off track.

For the past few months, I devoted a high degree of energy towards work, and my inner family life. This devotion of energy isn't bad by itself, and it is aligned with the current season of my life. However, it has thrown me off track, especially with health. And I am now feeling the cost of it.

That is what prompted me to write this post, as a note to my future self: the Four Burners Theory is more powerful than I give it credit for.

1. The Four Burners Theory, Put Simply
2. How I've Tried To Surpass It (And Failed)
3. What I'm Really Managing Is Energy, Not Time
4. 4 Burners Theory: My Mental Model
5. Life Is Divided By Seasons
6. Where I Am Today

The Four Burners Theory, Put Simply

As James Clear puts it on his blog: imagine a stove with four burners. Each burner represents a significant area of your life. Those areas, according to James, are family, friends, health, and work.

The theory is simple: if you want to be successful, you have to turn off one of these burners. And if you want to be very successful, you have to turn off two.

How I've Tried To Surpass It (And Failed)

In certain periods of my life, I have respected the theory. But almost inevitably, I would find myself trying to resist and surpass it.

Because while on an intellectual level, I understand its value and mechanics. But on some emotional level, I often wrestle with the theory. I keep thinking that maybe I can beat it. Maybe I can do better. Maybe I can overcome the very human limitations this theory outlines.

I would resist by telling myself, "I will keep two burners on simmer, and the other two on a high flame."

But these were just ways to deceive myself, that I could somehow surpass the very human limitations the theory outlines.

What I'm Really Managing Is Energy, Not Time

So what are these human limitations?

Over the years, I have come to understand that I am not really managing my time. I am managing my energy. On a given day, in a week, over a couple of months, over a decade, I am really managing my energy.

I have finite energy in a day. I might be able to go on overdrive and use up 100% of the energy available to me in the first four hours, and then be kind of like a zombie for the rest of the day.

But with time management, I would say: I have eight hours to work, one hour to exercise, one hour for other things. But every time I tried to manage my time this way and fit everything in, inevitably I would run out of energy.

On some days or maybe for a few weeks, I could do it all. But really, that was another way to deceive myself.

You see, if you have 10 units of energy available every day, you can spend 12 on a given day. It's possible. Just like overclocking a CPU.

But an overclocked CPU overheats. It needs cooling and maintenance, and it shortens its life. A human operates the same way. If I overclock, I have to pay this energy debt, much like the technical debt of a codebase. The further I push it into the future, the bigger the debt and the interest payments.

This matters, because sometimes I have used this overclock mechanism to surpass my regular human limitations and feel like I have conquered the four burners. Like I can do it all, and keep every burner firing on high.

But that was just a momentary state. It was never meant to last. It couldn't, simply due to the nature of energy.

When I started managing my energy instead, I realised I actually had more free time in the day, because I had no energy left. And that's okay. That shifted my perspective.

In a similar fashion, I feel the Four Burners Theory is really talking about how much energy you have. The gas in each burner is your energy that you're burning.

4 Burners Theory: My Mental Model

My understanding of this theory has evolved over the years, with my own life experiences.

Today, here is how I see it:

Energy is the currency. And I have 10 units available each day (on most days, sick days excluded). And each burner can be on low, medium, high, very high, or max.

I also have more burners to my life than the ones outlined by James Clear. Six, actually:

• Me: I am an important burner too. Taking time and space for myself, separate from work and health.
• Inner family: me, my partner, our future children.
• Outer family: my parents, my siblings. Equally important, but distinct from inner family.
• Health: I often think of it as physical health, but physical and mental health go hand in hand.
• Work: Whether it's towards doing hard things, or learning new skills.
• Friends: This is a blend of maintaining existing relationships and reserving some energy for new connections.

With only 10 units available, one burner on max already takes 8. There is barely anything left for the rest.

Where does that leave us mere mortals?

Life Is Divided By Seasons

There have been times in my life where I gave work my max energy and devotion. During such times, I would learn new skills and be very productive.

There have been times where Me was on max flame. Those were the times I made the greatest leaps in personal self-discovery, learning more about myself and the nature of my mind.

And there have been times where health was on max flame, and I would get very close to this ideal image of fitness in my mind.

And so very little else happened during those times. But that is okay. That is the beauty of seasons of life.

I think seasons are a very real way to approach prioritising things in our life. And I don't mean large seasons, like breaking your life into 20-year chunks.

I mean that there may be a few months, or a year or two, where health and fitness take the front seat. Maybe during that time nothing else was difficult, or needed a lot of energy. Maybe work was already stable. Maybe your relationship was already stable. So you could assign all the extra energy to health. Or to relationships. Or to work. Whatever was the flavour of that season!

In each of those seasons, the aspect of life that got more energy made more progress, while the others stayed in the same place, or sometimes even stagnated.

I fought this for years, trying to resist reality. But now I am coming around to truly accepting it. Not just intellectually, that happened years ago. But emotionally and viscerally in my body and being.

Maybe it's an age thing, but it's my philosophy that accepting my real human limitations is the most human thing there is. It's accepting that I'm not a machine. It's maturity, and progress in this journey of life. And it's beautiful, because it asks me to answer this hard question from time to time: "What is really important to me, right now in this season?"

Where I Am Today

Right now, I am figuring out how to change the balance of energy in my life.

From an overwhelming amount going towards work followed by inner family, I am choosing to redistribute my energy between health, slightly reduce the energy towards work, while keeping inner family at the same level.

As I type this, I can already feel my mind trying to resist the Four Burners Theory, and my human limitations.

My mind says, "we can squeeze Me in there somewhere. Maybe I can divide the units in such a way that I can have it all."

That is the overclock energy talking again.

And that is exactly why I wrote this post, as a note to my future self.

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