168 hours in a week. Sleep first — then divide what's left.
My brother Harvie shared the Four Burners Theory with me — the idea that your life is a gas stove with four hobs: Work, Family, Health, and Friends. Each one burns energy. The gas is finite.
To be successful you have to cut off one hob. To be very successful, you have to cut off two.
Most people pretend all four hobs are on full. They aren't. The question isn't whether you're making trade-offs; it's whether you're making them consciously. The metaphor stuck — but felt incomplete — so I built this.
I extended the model to six hobs. Family splits into Family and Relationship — a marriage can be thriving while a relationship with a parent is strained, or vice versa; they draw on different reserves and deserve separate attention. I also added Eudaimonia: the inner life of growth, learning, and meaning, distinct from health or work. A person can be fit, successful, and present — and still feel hollow. That's a sixth hob running cold.
To keep myself honest week to week, I get a weekly email every Sunday prompting me to revisit and save my hob settings. Different seasons of life call for different configurations — the mistake isn't choosing one, it's never revisiting it.
// slide to adjust — others rebalance automatically
add hours freely until the pool is full — then it steals from others