There’s an old saying the creatives in my old ad agency liked to lob at the suits when they started fire-breathing stuff like budgets and time and quality:
Fast. Cheap. Good. Pick any two.
Actually, we were rarely this articulate or polite under pressure, usually, we used a lot more words, rapid-fire and sotto voce, most of them of the NSFW variety.1
It’s a cheap truism, obviously crafted by someone who was paid a lot of money or given much time to come up with it, but it makes it no less truthful. That whole having-it-all thing? Bullshit bullshit bullshit. A bill of goods you’ve been sold by a similarly well-paid, overworked team of mad men, most of whom have the fat lifestyle or lousy home lives to back it up.
Which brings us to the updated project-triangle illustration for the modern age of self-actualization, the Four Burners Theory as (apparently) laid out by David Sedaris, and expounded upon by my young friend Chris Guillebeau. In the interests of symmetry, a model worth aspiring to, I lay it out thusly:
Family. Friends. Health. Work. Pick any three.
The metaphor of burners is a great one, provided the four you envision sit on a cooktop of the ancient variety (like me!) where there is limited gas to go around (unlike me!), and it is impossible to go great guns on all four at once. If you’ve been privileged enough to grow up cooking on Wolf ranges, think crappy, old plumbing, where a neighbor’s flush means your scalding-hot blast of shower. (Or, in the case of Gloomy Manor, any water running anywhere in the house means the trickle of shower water you’re under reducing itself to spittle.)
The idea is not that you can’t have all four, even at once: it’s that you can’t have an exceptional level of all four at once. You cannot put in the time required to raise children properly and nurture outstanding friendships of depth and be an elite athlete and win the Nobel prize in chemistry. Because to be outstanding at any one thing requires an outstanding level of focus on that thing. Ipso facto, right?
Since you are a smartypants, your brain is racing to find exceptions to this rule. Lance Armstrong, maybe. (Although, you know, that’s an awful lot of primary relationships, not to mention single-parent offspring, to qualify for categories #1 and 2.) As Ben Casnocha notes, Tim O’Reilly seems to be living the dream, but I’d wager O’Reilly himself would say that he’s not all-in with any one of the four categories.
My own bias has always been towards a singular focus on work; it’s how I was raised, and I suspect that to a degree, it’s also how I’m wired. My Crohn’s epiphany brought an end to that, though. In one fell swoop (and several subsequent months of recovery), I realized that while elite athletic performance was as meaningless to me as it had ever been, a baseline level of health and happiness was not. The former requires a certain amount of time and attention in the form of rest and, because of my annoyingly high-maintenance diet, food preparation. The latter? Well, sleep pulls double-duty, I refuse to be miserable at my own hand, and an average of eight hours daily is required to keep the Mean Reds and blues at bay.
The happiness part of the equation is far, far trickier, because family, friends and work each factor into that level of buoyancy I strive to maintain. I’m guessing they do for most of us; we feel better when we’re being useful, and that requires both meaningful work and a level of reasonable engagement with other human beings. Historically, I’ve let the first two slide. Most of the serious relationships I’ve had ended largely because I just can’t handle the demands of a primary relationship.2 Hell, I can’t always handle the demands of friendship. So I have a few close friends who, for whatever reason, put up with my bullshit, and many more casual friendships which are less time-intensive and which I can thus maintain without a lot of stress and drama.
This means I forfeit most of the benefits of family, and for now, I’ve made my uneasy peace with it. I really, really, really want to hit these next ten years hard, work-wise. If it means I end up pushing a shopping cart or a ward of the state in my old age, well, there’s no one to blame but me and my choices. I also accept that there’s no guarantee my work will be of a quality that justifies these choices. Frankly, that’s even scarier to me than ending up alone, which is probably an indication that I have a long way to go before I can join the ranks of the mentally healthy, but there you go: it’s the truth, and that’s as good a place as any to start from.
If I have a point here (other than my seeming one, which is to depress the hell out of you), it is this: you are the sum of your choices, and there is no gobbling up your cake and still having it whole on the counter, pristine in its lovely glass cake stand, there for you to enjoy tomorrow. And a non-choice is a choice, too, so there’s no weaseling out of it. Your life will get eaten up from under you, even if you don’t do the eating. (Pro tip: deep-six the TV.) I have been extraordinarily lucky in that the IDIOTIC amount of time I spent doing something I hated, writing ads, turned out to be of some utility later on. Really though, the sooner you can get yourself out of something you’re done with, or release something you have no use for, the better off you are. Trust me on this.3
In other words, let us not miss out on the most obvious and helpful part of the whole equation: pick. Choose. Decide. Spend time in thoughtful deliberation, weighing the pros and cons of your choices and actions and possible outcomes and then BE a verb.
Do not be like me and let life live you for too many years. A few, fine. No harm done. Everyone needs a break, and there is some value in playing at Candide a bit, here and there, for the adventure of it.
But do not lose sight of the almighty power you have built into you. Yes, be, but also, do.
Pick one to hit out of the park or pick a life that lets you gracefully enjoy a bit from the sampler plate of all four.
Pick, though. Pick today, and then pick again tomorrow…
xxx
c
UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Sedaris essay referencing the four burners The lady who told him about it (she’d heard of it in a management seminar) said the stove could be electric or gas. I think for the analogy to really work, energy-wise, it needs to be gas and old, per my description, above. But hey, what the flock do I know?
1If we could talk at all, that is. Sometimes, we were so apoplectic at the unreasonable demands, all we could do was fume and point to the graphical representation we’d clipped from wherever, probably an ad, while we kept working.
2There were other reasons, but I fully accept that I suck at giving my beloveds the attention they deserve. And until I figure this shit out, I’m off the market.
3Or, hey, just read the archives.
Good one. I struggle from four-burner syndrome all the time. Easier to tell myself to choose than to do it! Thanks for articulating this dilemma for me.
I think this alternative is misleading.
It doesn’t make obvious that we make be seeking the same thing(s) through these four types of activities. In which case the ‘dilemma’ is easily solved.
If you’re saying that we may be seeking to balance all four, or find a level of enjoyment in all four, or some similar kind of assertion, then sure, there is no dilemma. My point in the essay is *not* that, though—it’s that to achieve *exceptional* success in any *one* area, one of the others (or two, according to the Australian friend of Sedaris’) is going to take a hit. That, I see no way around. You cannot have fanatical and singular devotion to most things and have them align with something else. Even if you merge the health and the work burners, you’re going to have problems being fully present for family, unless you’re a tribe of fanatically devoted health-related enthusiasts. Throw kids into the equation and the whole thing falls apart. There’s no way you can fully attend to the needs of a developing human *and* have singular success at work, unless your work is raising your children. And then what about your health? Sure, you can maintain a baseline level throughout their childhood, but again, the singular focus cannot be there.
If you’re saying something else that I’m missing, I’d ask you to clarify.
It’s wasn’t until I read ‘A Long Walk to Freedom’, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, that I realised this. In this book, Mandela (my only hero, for all that he has done for South Africa and for the world) starts by apologizing to his children that while he ‘may have been useful to his country’, he realizes this came at the expense of being a good father – or even of being there as a father at all.
I figured that if my hero had to choose (and did), there’s no need for ME to try it all at the same time…
Thanks for bringing up the Mandela example. The work-life (or work-friends and/or family) rift is the most obvious example of the four burners theory in action, at least for our Western, industrial culture. I’m glad I went back and finally read the Sedaris piece, b/c I saw the context in which the theory came up, which was a management seminar.
In my personal experience, this was absolutely true. Dad worked, and had that burner up fill-tilt for my entire life and most of his; Mom took care of us and, outside of raising us, never found meaningful work. That’s the killer downer of this for women who choose to take on child-rearing as their work: what happens when the kids are up and out? Or—god forbid—the contract they enter into dissolves and they have to work in addition to raising their kids? It’s awful. And we do almost nothing as a society to address this, outside of saying annoying stuff like “make it work!” or “pull yourself up by your bootstraps!” or “figure it out!”
And the whole having-it-all crap? Makes me rage. Especially since it’s still mostly foisted on women.
I’ve spent too many years with what I can only describe as a slow simmering burn over, being a woman who was raised to believe ‘you can have it all’ but given no real-life examples of that in action. It’s taken me the better part of the last 19 years, since the first of my four children was born to begin to resolve this for myself and conclude it was just a bad ad.
I had set my course for grad school/career not family/home but being young enough to not be fully informed, had no idea until my first child was born that there just wasn’t another gig I’d be willing to trade for being with her and the three that followed. The problem was, I really didn’t have a clue how domestically unchallenged I’d be. As engaging, soul-filling, and empowering raising my children was, taking care of the day-to-day, never-ending grunt work and logistics was disengaging, mind-numbing, and disempowering.
Extreme frustration is incredibly compelling and I have spent a lot of time wrestling with this idea of having it all. I’ve been through the, ‘you can have it all – but not all at the same time’ phase which just isn’t helpful. I’ve railed against the notion that my husband was living the ‘having it all’ life since his career affords him accolades, advancement, support and secretaries to handle the stuff he hates at work; the majority of his family is invested in his line of work and so there is nothing lost there; and he had a wife. I kept the home fires burning while he set the world ablaze. And because he was already out, tucked in an exercise, stress release routine into his schedule, making working out part of his work. Once I let go of the resentment, I resolved if I wanted to do the same, I’d need a wife!
For the 4-burner concept to work, you need to be plugged in to the mainframe power grid, not a single outlet. Trust me on this one. If you are the soul source trying to power your family, career, friendships and health, it is guaranteed you’ll trip a switch, fry your circuits, burnout. It isn’t pretty and if you’ve set up your life this way, your power outage leaves everyone depending on you, fumbling in the dark. Again, not very helpful.
So much more useful would be for people to dump the sexy ‘have it all’ concept and look underneath it instead. What most people, or maybe it’s just me and the women I work with, want, is to experience meaningful, mutually supportive connections. When these are the mainstay, health and wealth improves. They are natural consequences, not something to struggle with or strive for. Focusing on the 4-burner success formula is about as useless as the backwards way we look at balance. The kind of balance talked about in management seminars is for teeter-totters, not a meaningful life. Both these approaches depend on limited strategies like multi-tasking, juggling, and compromising.
True balance is simple because we are wired for it and when we stop over-riding our natural systems with ‘logic’ and models designed for managing things, not people, we experience it with ease. We experience balance when our outer world is in sync with our inner world. Most of my suffering has come from spending too much time trying to match my inner world to my outer experience. And it is exhausting! And not very satisfying! The truth is, anything I really, truly, deeply desired, I could have, and in so many ways did. It was keeping up what I thought I should be doing and with others’ expectations of who I should be, that I couldn’t manage.
The key is exactly what you said, ‘Do not be like me and let life live you for too many years.’ Look deep within and discover what you really want your life to be. Don’t look outside yourself for clues or leave it to others to decide for you. Don’t waste your precious time and energy struggling to do everyone else’s all. Keep it simple and natural. Focus just on your all. Trust me, it will bring you so MUCH MORE than you can ever imagine!
xoxo
I’d agree that true balance is simple, but I definitely don’t think it’s easy to practice it. We may be wired for it, but we’re conditioned very differently. Women are generally taught to put aside notions of balance to care for whomever is on fire at any given moment (and to manage all the “background” stuff at the same time); men aren’t really taught about balance at all, or at least, they weren’t in the world that I grew up in.
So yes, it’s about looking for clues and self-actualization and all that good stuff we talk about here; I do think we need to be respectful of how extraordinarily complicated and difficult even waking up to it can be, much less changing it. Your own journey is a testament to that.
And yes, I think it cannot be stressed too much that context is critical when talking about any of this. Whose idea of success? What does that look like to them or to you? What does “extraordinary” mean?
The art world is rife with examples of people finding their natural balance. The ones we tend to hear about—the artists who float to the top, who gain visibility and attention and such—also tended to focus with laser-like precision on their art, to the exclusion of a great deal. We might look at a life that was brief and “hard,” devoid of love and creature comforts, as an awful thing, but if it’s the life that artist gravitated to, what then?
It sounds like you came to a place of peace with your own choices, which is wonderful, and really, is all any of us can do. I will die not knowing what it is to have children: at a certain point, I just got down with that. What’s incredible is that once I did, I felt this flood of relief because I got to be (sorry) child-free. I’m wondering the same thing about primary relationships now. Boy, are there great things about them. There are! I’ve experienced them. For me, right now, the cost of those great things is too dear. I just have to *think* about being in a relationship and I start hearing imaginary prison doors slamming shut.
The worst thing we do as a people is to encourage people to do *a* thing, whatever that is, instead of to spend time by themselves to figure out what the *right* thing is for them. (Well, it’s not the worst thing, but it’s a heinous practice.) Which is, I think, ultimately what you are saying: be your own “all,” not someone else’s idea of it. If it’s you and a book in a yurt, great! If it’s you and five kids on a farm, great! (Well, unless they hate it, in which case, fraught.)
Thanks for a very thought-provoking comment.
What a great thread this is turning out to be!
No. Thank you. Great post, great perspective, and great exchange. You Rock. Oh, and if I may, never apologize for who you are, especially if the only ‘offense’ was to be YOU, contrary to the conditioning. Looking at the conditioning, I like you WAY better! I like your honesty about the relief and sound of prison doors. You’re also right about how hard it is to acknowledge, let alone, honor what those gut level feelings are saying to you. Do you think being willing to admit these, along with the next bold act of disbelieving the conditioning, opens the doors for seeing and claiming the alternative possibilities that make our hearts leap forward, and expand instead of cringe? Then if we can, act quickly, before that part of us that panics, realizes we’ve jumped the fence.
the ctrix: Adding here, b/c nesting comments only go so deep. (Profound, no?)
To clarify, the “(sorry)” I interjected was for slinging that sometimes-offensive shorthand term for “chooses not to have children” (“child-free”). It was a little lazy and sneaky and sloppy, tucking that in there. You’re 100% right about not apologizing for my choices, or for who I am (which, as we’ve determined, is largely the sum of my choices).
When reading this, I instantly tried to rebel against this notion. In what ways is this *not* true? But then, the more I thought about it, I realized that it’s pretty darn accurate. And depressing.
But I think one thing that needs to be said is that we are constantly picking three. We don’t pick three at age 19 and then get stuck with them for our entire lives. We pick three each day & each minute. There are some times when we will sacrifice our health, our families, etc. in order to make something else in the equation work better.
Maybe this strategy makes me less successful at all four, but I hope that it balances in the end.
A life in balance is different than a snapshot of a life at any single moment. I agree—this is a cumulative thing, for most of us. (And most of us are picking three, not two. My god—two? No, thanks. I was born with a restless spirit, for sure, but not so restless I don’t like me a little roots and comfort.)
Yes, this reminds me of the first reply to Chris Guillebeau’s post that was referenced in Colleen’s about “juggling”. When our kids are younger, the focus might go there. When our friends have a particular need, then there.
Personally, I’m satisfied with “good enough” across all lines and tire of the constant ‘striving’ to be uber-successful. I want to be happy and, in the end, for me, that means more focus on relationship and less on work.
Of course, I’m often poor as a church mouse. It’s a trade-off so I guess, in the end, Colleen wins!
Nearing a year on my trek to become self-supporting through my art (read: living, really living as an artist), I’m frequently stalled by the knowledge that the majority of others doing the same are a good 20-30 years younger. This pops the “what the hell have I been doing!” pangs. But then one of my wonderful children does or tells me about doing some powerful thing they are moving toward, and I remember. The only “full-time” I did during those decades was nurturing them. And then I focus. Those years (still) were also nurturing me, banking sights, sounds, ideas and techniques. Paraphrasing the knight in the Indiana Jones movie–”I chose wisely.”
I think if you measure the success of a life as leaving a mark by sharing help of some kind, it’s a more helpful framework than “Changing the World via x.”
Because touching people or helping people isn’t always big or glamorous, but it’s meaningful (and, if we’re lucky, far-reaching). It’s a huge gift, donating your youthful vigor towards the excellent rearing of true human beings.
And fortunately, as you mention, you also are learning valuable things—tools, processes, etc.—through that extended focusing act. Really, you’re in a much better place than I, as far as good things to point to—you have people! Who are out there, doing things, and acknowledging your role in making that possible! Whereas I can only hope that somehow, all this crazy wandering and this peripatetic education in communicating will somehow add up to something useful. Most likely, even if I manage, I won’t live to see it.
Which is another reason I’m unwilling to turn down that extra burner—too selfish!
YES! I love this! – “The only “full-time” I did during those decades was nurturing them. And then I focus. Those years (still) were also nurturing me..’ We just can’t judge today where the road we’re on is heading and we have to remember we need quality raw materials to create great works. It’s been my experience too, children are one of life’s richest sources.
xoxo
I’m saving this one…for a long time. ‘Nuf said.
This so resonates with me. I read a book recently, “Better Off” by a couple who spent about a year living in a community even less techno than the Amish. The main lesson I drew from the book, and a strong theme the author was leaning into, as that “leisure time” or “social” time is over-rated. That the strengths and friendships in the community were built through work parties. People coming over to help with the harvest, or with a barn-raising, or with a huge canning party, or what have you.
I think the idea that you can have all four to an exceptional level is total bs, as you pointed out. And yet by combining them, it seems you can go a lot further. We’re just starting to work with this idea in our circle of friends, and it seems so intuitive and more fulfilling in so many ways.
We’ll see how the experiment goes. But I recommend the book highly-it was a great read:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780060570057-6
Mark,
Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve added it to my (very long) Amazon wishlist.
Agreed, “back in the day”, work/life were the same thing and involved your whole family/community, PLUS the results of your work were much more tangible (food, shelter). We didn’t need sleep medication because we were exhausted, we didn’t have stress, per se, because we worked it all out physically.
I wonder as we continue to evolve and most of our work is of the brain vs. hands variety, how we will learn to manage these really deeply profound questions. I certainly don’t know.
Naw… doesn’t have to be this way at all. We just need to legislate a 30 day somehow
Thanks for the perspective… I may make a sign like that for myself.
Another great post. Lots of good truths to chew on however tough they might be. I thought Sedaris said “pick two.” At least you’ve given us three.
Thanks for posting this, Jane. It’s what finally got me off my lazy ass to look up the Sedaris piece!
And the direct quote is this:
“…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.”
So “yes” to at least one; two if you’re uber-serious.
Awesome post. I was mulling over the “four burners” thing myself and so I’m glad to see you address it in your usual insightful and eloquent manner. I’m wondering: is it possible to cheat? To fold some of those things in together? (For example, if developing cool friendships can be described as “networking”, then…?)
Absolutely, there is overlap. The only way I’ve been able to have any kind of a social life is to align “friends” and “work.”
“Family,” though, is largely absent. If my sister (who is 90% of my remaining family) and I decided to go into business together, well, maybe. But that feels like a cheat on the 4B model. Because I think that the model is really defining “family” as, if not “family WITH kids,” at least “family that expects you to be there.”
I don’t put the time into family, really, so I don’t expect it to be there for me. Thanksgiving and other holidays are a scramble, sometimes, although I have no compunctions about asking friends to include me in on theirs—I threw many an Orphans’ Thanksgiving in my day.
Time for another post entitled: “Multitasking is bullshit”.
I read Guillebeau’s post and have to say I’m mightily impressed with your response. When he posed the question – which was positively un-American of him, what country is he in right now? – I didn’t want to think about it. But you made me and I’m glad for it.
Note to @LisaC: While multitasking may be b.s., multislacking is very, very real. It involves simultaneously NOT doing as many things you should be doing as possible. Some people can actually multitask and multislack at the same time, usually while driving to the mall.
It is peculiarly American, this notion of having it all. Young country, so we all still have the hubris of adolescence, I guess.
And “multislacking”? Well, that is genius. I am stealing it. With attribution.
This really is a great one. Thank you. Doing a little wake-up work these days, so particularly hearing:
“…a non-choice is a choice, too, so there’s no weaseling out of it. Your life will get eaten up from under you…”
You really nail the shit out of stuff – right smack on the head. And I always love your phrasing.
I remember (with some fondness and a good deal of cringing) when a friend chided me with, “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself” and I *howled* in awe and thought she was a Freaking. Genius. I didn’t know she had it in her! I posted it on my walls! No wonder she looked at me a bit askance…
Yeah, I don’t always get out enough.
Yes, absolutely! I came of age in the 80s, when women were being sold the bill of goods that we could have it all (that damn Enjoli commercial? I STILL hear it in my head).
Nearly three decades later, even though I’m fully aware that it isn’t possible to have it all and do it all, I still feel have to fight the tendency to feel guilty that I’m not a size zero with perfectly coiffed hair who’s a regular Class Mom at my son’s school while simultaneously running a Fortune 500 company and singing with the Met and cooking gourmet meals for dinner every night in my immaculately clean kitchen.
I think the more we remind ourselves that it’s okay to choose our priorities and not try to be superhuman, the better off we’ll all be.
Goddamn that #$%@$ commercial. I still remember it, too. I thought it was the 1970s, though—I had a distinct memory of wearing Dr. Scholl’s sandals and drinking Tab at Chicago Jan’s house.
Turns out we’re both right. Original 1970s version; revamp in 1980. Some fascinating changes from the first to the second:
“Never ever let you forget you’re the man” becomes “aman”; and my fave part, at the end, Sensitive 1980s guy says in VO, “Tonight I’m gonna cook for the kids.”
Vom. It.
Hmmm. Then my memory is off – I definitely remember the version of the evil commercial from the 70s. And with that, I now even even older.
I couldn’t say I remembered this ad when you mentioned it but then I watched them and WOW, talk about flashbacks! Looking at these 30!! years later, it all makes sense (ha, ha!) I’d love to create the 2010 version – Actually I’d love to see your version Colleen.
The trick is to meld friends and work–then you only have three burners to balance!
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