During the Weedmaps IPO, my health burner was barely a pilot light. Friends burner was off entirely.
I told myself it was temporary. It wasn't. There was always another sprint.
The Four Burner Theory says you have four burners in life: family, friends, health, and work. To be successful, you cut one. To be really successful, you cut two.
Every technical leader I know has lived this tradeoff. We've just accepted it as the cost of ambition.
But here's what I'm starting to see with AI: it doesn't just help you allocate energy better across burners. It increases the total supply of gas.
Previous productivity tools compressed more work into the same hours. AI is eliminating entire categories of cognitive effort. And when that mental energy becomes available, you can point it at any burner, not just work.
I wrote about why this generation of AI might be the first technology that actually changes the four burner math.
The constraint was never time. It was always attention.
๐ https://itsmeduncan.com/2026/02/18/can-ai-solve-the-four-burner-problem/
Which burner did you turn down? Is AI helping you turn it back up?
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