3 words to trigger a hot streak at work

Professionals often produce their best work in bursts. Scientists discovered how to get into these ‘hot streaks.’

Most of us think of “hot streaks” as a sports phenomenon, but look closely at the careers of just about any high achiever and you’ll see hot streaks aren’t limited to sports. Careers follow a similar pattern in which our best work clusters tightly together in time. So how do you bring on one of these hot streaks?

3 words to trigger a creative explosion

Northwestern University economist Dashun Wang recently reported a breakthrough. In the journal Nature

Communications, Wang and his collaborators outlined their efforts to use AI to analyze the professional output of more than 2,000 artists, 4,000 film directors, and 20,000 scientists. The goal was to identify so-called hot streaks and to look at when and how they occurred in the span of people’s careers. Wang uncovered a simple three-word formula for tapping into your greatest creative potential:

“Explore, then exploit.”

After crunching through his massive data set, Wang noticed that hot streaks came when a person first went through a period of relatively unfocused experimentation, but then crucially settled down to the hard task of exploiting whatever insights they had gained during their wanderings. “Neither exploration nor exploitation alone in isolation is associated with a hot streak. It’s the sequence of them

together,” Wang said.

The secret is in the sequence.

Periods of exploration can look aimless or fruitless. But open-ended searching is an essential precursor to great work. Even if it feels frustrating or like a waste of time, you need to make space for exploration if you eventually want to reach your potential. On the flip side, you can’t be a searcher forever. Insight is useless without execution, so knowing when you’ve landed on the right idea and need to grind is equally essential.