The Equal Odds Rule: The likelihood of any single work becoming a major hit stays roughly the same across a creator's career. Most great creatives become great not by cracking a secret formula, but simply by producing a lot.
Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton proposed the equal odds rule: across a creator's lifetime, the probability that any individual work becomes a major hit stays roughly the same.
What really determines which era they're most productive in is how much they're publishing. Any given thing has equal odds of being extremely important.
Of course, there are exceptions. Gödel published almost nothing, yet rewrote the foundations of logic. However, Michael Nielsen believes you need a very good reason not to follow the Equal Odds Rule.
The most successful creatives, Shakespeare, Mozart, and Picasso, did not crack a secret formula. They simply produced an enormous volume of work and let the math do its job.
Nielsen observed that brilliant people who fail to produce anything are often allergic to public judgment. They wait endlessly for the "great project" that will make them famous.
The waiting becomes the work. Nothing ever ships. This echoes Quantity Predicts Quality.