The 80/20 Rule of Creative Careers

The secret to creative success is broken pots.

I’ve been thinking about this lopsided truth of creative work while watching my son navigate film school. Creative careers don’t operate on some fair, balanced system where every project gets equal weight. They follow a brutal but liberating pattern you can spot everywhere from particle physics to viral TikToks: most of your results spring from just a tiny fraction of your work.

It’s The Pareto Principle. The 80/20 rule. The secret sauce of creative life.

Here’s my personal math: Alias, Lost, Heroes, and Hannibal, those four shows are my 20%. They’re what people remember. They paid my bills. The calling cards that still open a few doors.

But to reach those four, I cranked out dozens of scripts that went nowhere. I staffed on forgettable shows. Pitched tons of projects that died before dessert arrived. Wrote a gazillion spec scripts that are still collecting digital dust. This mountain of “failed” work is my 80%. And without it, the 20% never happens.

Robert Rodriguez compares this to leaning ceramics. You don’t sit down and make one perfect pot. You make a hundred pots. Most crack in the kiln, wobble on the wheel, or look like a blob. But every broken pot teaches your hands something they didn’t know before. That’s the 80/20 rule doing its thing across every creative field.

Your work won’t matter equally. You grind out ten projects, but only one catches fire. The rest aren’t failures, they’re part of your training montage.

A few moments will define everything. Careers get built on single scripts, single scenes, single game mechanics, and single tracks. The Sixth Sense is M. Night’s calling card from one twist. Reservoir Dogs launched Tarantino from one warehouse conversation.

Champions multiply your reach. You’ll take hundreds of meetings that go nowhere. But if you find two or three true believers, it’s a game-changer. For me, school chums Chris Silbermann and J.J. Abrams were those leverage points, collaborators who inspired me and opened doors I couldn’t unlock alone.

Success tips suddenly. It doesn’t climb steadily. It can sit quietly for months or years, then explode when the right project hits at the right moment. Complexity theory in action.

For Screen Scribblers

The Calling Card Script: You might write for years before a spec or short becomes your golden ticket. Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Kevin Smith’s Clerks. For me, Alias was the TV show that kicked off everything else.

Five Pages Rule the Feature: Your screenplay is 110 pages, but maybe five of those pages contain what audiences will remember forever. The “I see dead people” moment. The “I am your father” reveal. Those five pages carry the other 105.

Champion Hunting: Out of dozens of lunch meetings and general conversations, maybe two executives will become true believers in your work. Find them. Feed them. Help them to help you.

Short Films as Swiss Army Knives: Don’t just make shorts for practice. Make them do triple duty: proof of concept, portfolio piece, and viral calling card. Set yourself up for success.

For Game Designers

Game design could be the purest expression of 80/20 thinking.

Core Mechanics Trump Everything: 80% of player joy comes from 20% of your design. If rolling dice or drafting cards isn’t fun, all the polished pixels in the world won’t save you.

Prototype Ugly, Learn Fast: Don’t spend six months making it pretty. Cardboard and Sharpies will teach you what works. The polish should come after you know the game doesn’t suck.

Superfan Physics: A tiny core of obsessed players will spread the news about your game further than any marketing budget. Identify them. Support them. Help them be your evangelists.

The Portfolio Anchor: One successful design becomes the foundation for everything else. That’s your 20% doing the heavy lifting.

80/20 Everywhere

Music: Radiohead has nine albums. Most people know three songs.

Fashion: Designers create dozens of pieces per season. One becomes iconic, the rest provide context.

YouTube/TikTok: Creators upload hundreds of videos. One goes viral and carries the channel to monetization.

The 80/20 rule doesn’t care about your medium. It’s baked into how creative systems work.

What I Tell My Sons

For the Film Student: Keep shooting, keep writing, keep experimenting. Most projects will live in the 80% zone, and that’s the only path to discovering your 20%. Every failed short, every crappy first draft, every rough cut is building the skills you’ll need when lightning strikes.

For the Game Designer: Don’t get stuck perfecting one concept or rulebook for three years. Build ten prototypes. Most will flop. One will fly. That one will justify all the other broken attempts.

Rodriguez understands something most people miss: you need all those broken pots. That 80% isn’t waste, it’s compost. The drafts, sketches, and mechanics will be the foundation of your career. Crank out work until the 20% is revealed, then double down hard.