Tackling overwhelm: the 4 burners theory

This is a much longer blog than usual, but includes lots of practical, easy to implement solutions!

In August 2009 David Sedaris published an article in the New Yorker magazine entitled “Laugh Kookabura (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/24/laugh-kookaburra)”.Within it he recounted a personal story of childhood and the later impact on adult friendships, which led to presentation of his 4 burners theory; the idea that life consists of family, friends, work and health, represented by 4 burners on a hob (stove top, for those who prefer the original American), and that in order to be successful, the flow to one burner must be cut off, and that in order to be very successful two burners must burn extremely dimly, if at all.  He argued that whilst individual burners could burn extremely brightly, it was the flow of gas (i.e. an individual’s time and/or energy) to the burners themselves which was the limiting factor, and therefore all 4 could not burn to their ferocious maximum potential.

Whilst that all makes logical sense, we do after all have a finite amount of time, even if there are actions that can be taken to increase one’s energy availability. It is rather depressing though if viewed through the having it all lens!  However, if we’re suffering from overwhelm and feeling like we’re not making much progress anywhere, how can this idea help? I’d like to offer 5 different viewpoints/strategies with a mixture of practical things to try, in addition to mindset shifts which could help:

1. Shift your mindset from I want it all, all of the time to accepting that you have a limited amount of time, and that there will ALWAYS be more things to be done than time available to do them in, even if you’ve optimised your energy levels and productivity. That is simply the nature of intellectual jobs; a set of boring but necessary tasks that must be carried out, hopefully a set of interesting things that are also mandatory, and then an unending stream of possibilities, limited only my imagination, time, effort and any resources that you need to test the ideas out. In other words there are always too many things to be done, or that could be done and therefore trade offs are inevitable. They cannot be escaped so you might as well embrace the process, and the privilege to choose, rather than let missed opportunities drag you down and therefore impact what you do decide to focus on.
2. Develop a practice of periodically reflecting on which area/s are important right now (with an eye on the future but not controlled entirely by it) and allowing those to take precedent when you must prioritise where to spend time and energy. Treat this as an experiment. The questions you are trying to answer are does flexing my focus on a week, by week, month, by month, or some other periodicity lead to a more fulfilled life for me. Forget what everyone else is doing, we might all be travelling through the same ocean but some of us are on super yachts, others in rowing boats, but whatever the vehicle there are bound to be various of us bailing madly as our boat has sprung a leak! As for most blog posts I’ve popped a downloadable worksheet within the RiF Inner Circle area of our online learning/coaching session booking platform. You can access that for FREE here: https://onlineaccess.researchinfocus.com/products/rif-inner-circle. You’ll need to register if you haven’t already, this is just so that we can see which resources are most helpful, and keep everything up to date. If you want to hear what we’re up too and what new resources, etc. we’ve shared, you’ll need to actually tick the box (or register below) for our ~10 times a year newsletter (sign up at the end of this article) direct to your inbox.
3. Accept that life happens in seasons, and that’s ok! Just because a colleague, or a friend is forging ahead in their research endeavours, or home life respectively right now it doesn’t mean you need too, or even that it’s the optimal time for you to do so i.e. run your own race, don’t compare yourself! Your overall priorities will change, maybe over decades, maybe over a small number of years, but prepared for them to change as life seasons come and go. If we think of this as a natural process, then changes, and worrying about keeping up, or what we’re told we SHOULD be doing by now won’t add so much to the overwhelm. Sometimes you want to throw yourself into establishing visibility for your work, sometimes no matter what you seem to do you remain feeling invisible, sometimes things just cascade and everybody wants to collaborate, or you want to seize an opportunity to capitalise on a recent success; other times you want to give back, perhaps mentoring those following you by a few years. Sometimes you might want to focus on family and set professional activities to a gentle tick over. Using the reflection strategy outlined in 2) is useful to figure out whether the current “season” you’re in is a short lived period, of weeks, or months, or longer. For example, in my Masterclass Lite course I talk about approaching grant writing as a sprint, taking inspiration from software development i.e. write your grant application in phases. For each phase decide: what you’re going to do, who’s going to do it if working as a team, when you’re going to do it by and what success looks like. Then go through a phase of feedback from colleagues, collect all the feedback, decide which bits to use (and which not, especially if you receive contradictory feedback, which can be the case especially for larger/strategic proposals) then edit as a phase and iterate as necessary. If you continuously tweak and continuously respond to feedback writing feels never ending and is thus more stressful.  You can also apply the sprint principle elsewhere. For example by thinking about periods of time, or events as projects. I’m not suggesting your family holiday should have every minute scheduled precisely, especially if that approach doesn’t work for you, but by focusing on something as of primary importance for that time and leaving everything else purposefully on slow burn maybe you’ll be more present, less distracted by things within the other “burners” and have more fun!
4. Set clear boundaries. By generally sticking to your well-considered plan you’ll maintain a greater sense of control over how you are choosing to docus your time and thus experience less overwhelm.  Of course, we have to flex a little e.g. to respond to unexpected events in life, home, or work matters, but sticking to a general allocation of time/energy should improve things if you are currently significantly overwhelmed. So what are boundaries, and how can you set and maintain them? Boundaries are remit/scope/time/space/etc. constraints that you choose to operate within. For example, having decided how you wish to utilise your time, you might decide that you will only focus on work matters between say 08.30 & 17.30, and that outside of these times, you won’t distract yourself by attempting to multi task, you might decide that you will be fully present to other areas of life. This is easier said that done of course. Doing so requires you to stick to your agreement with yourself and communicate this with others. Often times this will be very difficult, and you’ll need to weigh up the cost of disrespecting yourself and those the time would otherwise be dedicated, to vs the cost of saying no, or not doing the thing. Practical ways to start to develop the habit of clear boundaries include:
   • Setting calendar blocks to ensure that others do not assume you are available to them and/or to remind yourself what you’ve promised yourself!
   • Set up automatic “do not disturb” times to turn off email, and other alerts for things related to a burner that you’ve decided will be turned down/off at particular hours.
   • Stop yourself logging into the above systems to see if anything needs your attention at times when you’ve promise yourself you’ll be focused elsewhere. This might be difficult for some, a trick here is to have an alterative action to distract yourself e.g. if I start wondering if there are alerts I’ll run up the stairs, or drink a glass of water, something small (and preferably healthy!) to create just enough distraction from the thing you’re trying to avoid.  After a week, or two, the new habit should be ingrained!
   • Avoid mentally, and physically bringing work home with you. Of course you’ll need to occasionally flex to meet important deadlines but this should be an exception, not standard. To mentally detach try some of the techniques suggested below, have a strategy to refocus yourself if work thoughts sneak into your mind when you’ve said you want to concentrate on something else, carry a small notebook so if a genius research idea does come to you, you can at least capture it to come back to later, and try to interject a physical activity to help you move between different foci. For example, if you’re working from home do the end do the end of work day routine suggested below, then (regardless of weather – treat yourself to a decent coat/umbrella!) go for a quick walk around the block, returning fresh and ready for e.g. family/friends time.
   • Use physical space demarcation to make it harder to just pop and check a work thing. For example, if you’re lucky enough to have a separate home office develop the habit of closing the door, or if you e.g. work from the kitchen table invest in a box into which you can put all your things at the end of the day. Or if you’re setting up a desk in a multi-use room, and a box isn’t practical try to buy something like an old style bureau, or a desk with drawers/cupboards that things can be put away into, or at least cover desk clutter with a pleasant fabric. Out of sight, out of mind if what you’re aiming for!
   • Accept that there is rarely anything so urgent that we must act on it immediately, most things can wait until you’re fresh the next day when you’ll tackle them much faster anyway! Obviously if you’re responsible for e.g. a piece of complex instrumentation, or responding to fire alerts, etc. then don’t turn those alerts off, because doing so not only neglects your duties, but will also cause more stress as you’ll feel the need to continuously check. Instead automate as much as possible so no news is good news!
   • Boundaries of course will be vulnerable to the wants and needs of other people; perhaps one of the most painful aspects of setting boundaries could be learning to say no to others. Saying no can be painful for a lot of people because many of us feel that to do so damages our view of ourselves as kind and helpful, or could harm our reputation, or chances of future opportunities, or just makes us feel guilty. We also of course sometimes need to say no to ourselves!  It is true that the effects of saying no need to be thought about carefully, but what is worse saying no kindly in a way that the other person respects, or saying yes but then having to pull out at a later date, or making a total mess of whatever the task was because we didn’t have the time to do it well?  It’s more respectful to say no early and give the asker a chance to find someone else to help, or indeed to reflect on whether the timing is crucial if it’s your input they really need.  If you struggle to say no to others there are some example sentences available for download from the RiF Inner Circle.  If you struggle to say no to yourself, it’s a matter of learning to be a better prioritiser, accept that you cannot do everything as well as you might like and instead reframe your thinking to say that you are learning to be better at prioritising. Again there are resources available in the RiF Inner Circle, including Warren Buffet's 25-5 rule for prioritising.
   • When thinking about boundaries consider which activities are catalytic i.e. highly supportive to others. For example, a decent night’s sleep and well being will likely support your efficiency and effectiveness in every other area of your life. Prioritise those when deciding between competing areas!
5. Once you’ve set boundaries you can use the approach of embracing constraints to maximise what can be achieved in the time available. For example, you could:
   • Brainstorm questions such as “if I only had 15 minutes every day to exercise what would give me maximum impact” (n.b. note for middle age women: the answer is a high protein diet, super short but super intense bursts of cardio (just a couple a week!) and lifting heavy sh** check out Stacey Sims’ and Gabrielle Lyon/Donald Layman’s books and research – one day I might write a blog on how I’ve used those ideas to loose 25Kg and 4 clothing sizes, whilst building a bit more muscle, or at least making what I already had more obvious!).
   • You can also do a) when deciding whether, or not to accept a request from someone else. For example, if I only had 1 hour to dedicate to this could I make a meaningful contribution, in which case I could say yes, or if no, I’d be better off saying no. Remember it’s good practice to say no in a kind and respectful way, the receiver will understand and not be put out! Making a helpful suggestion of someone else to approach, or sharing a resource that could help instead will mean you leave the interaction feeling much better about saying no, and giving the asker a useful next step!
   • Build in a ~15minute slot at the end of each day to take stock and decide on your priorities for the next day, this will enable you to get so much more done the next day than you would otherwise do because it cuts out the need to think. You just arrive and do, and you’ll do much more effectively because you won’t have exhausted yourself working out what to do, or being distracted by the needs of others.
6. The last strategy is to integrate burners, where doing so does not harm achievements. If we’ve met, or you’ve read a few previous blogs, you’ll probably have heard me say time and time again, that there’s no such thing as multi-tasking, there’s rapid sequential mono tasking, but no true multitasking, and besides which if we’re trying to do too many things at once we often end up doing none of them well, or in less time overall, than focusing on one thing at a time, then switching. However, I’m about to contradict myself…, IF you can undertake activities which relate to different burners using very different parts of your body then it’s quite likely that you can achieve multiple tasks at once. For example, you can’t achieve training for both a marathon and a 100m sprint at precisely the same time, maybe you could do a variation of Scout’s pace i.e. 50 paces marathon pace, 50 paces sprint, BUT you could achieve training for a marathon and connecting with your friends/people with similar interests. So when you’re looking to integrate activities to manage to work on more of your priorities look for opportunities to integrate very different things. Could you for example, build a lunch time walk into your schedule a few times a week with friends, or, if an attractive idea to all, turn your 1:1 or 1: few, sitting meetings into “walk-shops”. You don’t have to walk at an athletic pace but at least you’ll have got moving, got some fresh air AND had the meeting AND not have to drag yourself out in a cold, dark winter night after dinner just so you’ve ticked “daily health walk” off your to do list! As a by product I’ll try and find the paper I read about humans being more creative when out in nature, much more so than in stuffy meeting rooms, so if you don’t need any equipment maybe that’s workable for you. You can always carry a notepad and pause if 1 of the conversation partners needs to draw something, or write a formula to better explain their thoughts!  Or treat yourself to that Pilates class you’ve been meaning too. OK you’re often crazy schedule might mean you miss a few classes, but perhaps it will serve as a useful encouragement to help you ruthlessly focus earlier that day and/or a useful pre-booking to say no to colleagues??? The key here is to create new habits that stick. Habits are always difficult for the first ~month, or so (some of us are better at ingraining new habits, and some habits are easier to in-grain than others), so there’s a tips workbook on the RiF Inner Circle to help. Once you’ve got a productive new habit to stick though, they can really support you to achieve in other areas of life.

That’s it! I hope you enjoyed this exploration of the 4 Burners Theory and some top tips to implementing it to help battle overwhelm.  If it’s helped we’d love to know, please tag us on any social media posts, let you colleagues/friends know and/or drop us an email: [email protected] Remember to join the RiF Inner Circle for more resources, including worksheets to implement the ideas described here!

Becky