What triggers a career hot streak?

Across a range of fields, individual careers are characterized by hot streaks, bursts of high-impact works clustered together in close succession. The hot streak highlights a specific period during which an individual's performance is substantially better than their typical performance. An example of a hot streak is Jackson Pollock's three-year period from 1947 to 1950, during which he created most of his famous artworks with his particular "drip technique". A few years ago, Lui and colleagues used AI to examine the work of scientists, artists, and film directors for hot streaks throughout their careers. They determined how impactful their work was by looking at output such as a scientist's most-cited papers over a 10-year period, auction prices for artwork, and IMDB.com movie ratings.