Hot Streaks in Your Career Don’t Happen by Accident
Albert Einstein in the early 1900s. Aretha Franklin in the 1960s. Steve Jobs in the 2000s. There are certain spans of time when scientists, artists, and inventors have phenomenal periods of productivity.
This is also true of most people—at least on a smaller scale. Aren’t there periods when you feel like you’re effortlessly flourishing at work, while other times you feel incompetent and uninspired? You might recognize these periods of concentrated success among your friends, peers, and competitors too.
The Northwestern University economist Dashun Wang calls these special bursts of creativity “hot streaks”—a term usually reserved for sports. “Ninety percent of people have a hot streak in their career,” Wang told me. “Most people have just one. Some people have two. It’d be nice to have more.”
In the past few years, Wang has peeled back the mystery of why these special creativity clusters happen and how individuals and companies can multiply and extend them. Three years ago,
