Complex Numbers

Burned Out

Discuss the “Four Burners Theory” as it is outlined in this website:

https://jamesclear.com/four-burners-theory

Which burner in your life burns the brightest? If you had to completely turn off one of your burners to be successful in the other three, which would you turn off?

Calling that self-help-seminar ejaculate a "theory" is an insult to the entire institution of science.

A theory is not just a guess or a way of looking at things - we have other words for those. No, a theory is a system that is supported by evidence and can be used to make further inquiries. And when those inquiries contradict something in the theory, the theory changes. This? This is little more than a philosophical metaphor, and as philosophical metaphors go, it's woefully inadequate.

But let's work with it, for now.

At the moment, I have exactly one burner going, and it's on simmer: the health one. So maybe I'm not the one to address the article's points. But, as this is my blog and it has me fired up (pun, as always, intended), I'm going to do it anyway.

The first burner represents your family.

"Family" can mean many things, but this particular article plays the "you're going to have kids" card, and it's clear that "family" means "offspring" in this context. Well, I sidestepped that one neatly, didn't I? My answer to work-family balance? Don't reproduce. Kids just aren't worth the time, energy, effort, or money. I read somewhere that it takes half a million dollars to raise a child through the end of high school, if you're a middle-class American (to be fair, there aren't many of those anymore). Used to be they were useful, when most people had farms and whatnot and they could provide free labor. These days, you can't even have one mow your lawn without horrified looks from other people.

The second burner is your friends.

I've mentioned before that I'm an introvert. This doesn't mean that I have no friends; it means that I have fewer "friend" relationships that I nurturemaintain to the best of my limited ability. We do stuff together. I stay away from high-maintenance people. This pretty much takes care of itself.

The third burner is your health.

This is the one I say I have on simmer. I didn't have it on at all for a long time, so I had a heart attack. Even after that, I didn't turn it on until fairly recently. I'm still surprised at how successful I've been at following a regimen that has caused me to lose some weight, though I have a long way to go. But I work on this oh, maybe two hours a day: a bit over an hour to go to the gym, and a bit under an hour to prepare meals.

The fourth burner is your work.

Work, to me, was always about one thing: amassing enough money so I didn't have to work. So I don't work anymore. When I did, everything else kind of fell by the wayside, because that often happens when one owns a business. Even before that, while I wasn't what you'd call a workaholic, I did work far more than the formerly standard 40 hours a week. This cost me two marriages. And now that I don't have to work, I'm deliberately single again. Life is strange.

“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.”

What the sodding hell does "successful" mean? Okay, I guess I was successful, because I'm mostly where I want to be right now. You define your own success. Money? Family? Living to 110? Partying? Those each relate to one of the "four burners." My success isn't yours. As noted in the article, "Most entrepreneurs, artists, and creators I know would feel bored and without a sense of purpose if they had nothing to work on each day." Well, I never feel bored, and I frankly don't need a sense of purpose, so like I said, work to me was always nothing but a means to an end. Other people, I understand, are different.

nobody likes being told they can't have it all, but everyone has constraints on their time and energy. Every choice has a cost.

Well, fucking DUH. But the converse is also true: every cost has a choice. No one can have it all. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's not about having what you want.

It's about wanting what you have.