The Reel, The Meal, The Feels

by Michelle Higa Fox, Group Creative Director at BUCK

This article captures an idea from a longer talk I gave at DashBash, a two-day motion design festival held in Raleigh, NC, in June 2025, about maintaining stamina in creative careers.

The One-Third Rule

One of the things that keeps me grounded is having non-screen-based hobbies outside of work. One of my favorites is tennis. What I love about tennis is that it’s not about perfection; it’s about showing up.

There’s a principle I learned from the game called the one-third rule. In an ideal scenario, a third of the time you play amazingly well, a third of the time you’re just OK, and a third of the time you’re struggling. That balance is actually the sweet spot.

If you’re winning all the time, you’re not stretching your capabilities.

If you’re losing every single time, you’ve probably signed up for hard mode unnecessarily.

But if you’re somewhere in the middle, fluctuating between both experiences, you’re probably growing.

That idea has followed me back into the studio. Because if you are approaching creative work as a long game, you get better by staying in the game long enough to learn how to adjust. Match after match, no matter what kind of serve, or brief, or client call comes your way. The challenging days feel like part of being in the game, and less like personal failings. The good days are easier to celebrate. And you learn to appreciate those “middle third days” for their contributions as well, rather than taking them for granted.

One for the Meal, One for the Reel, One for the Feels

If the rule of thirds can guide how we approach the long game, it can also shape how we think about our creative practice. You may have heard the industry phrase when taking on new work, “one for the reel and one for the meal.” This idea doesn’t always work for me, because it implies that your portfolio piece (the “reel”) is the most fulfilling to you as a creative. But, in fact, that may trap us into feeling confused or empty when our “reel” piece still isn’t fulfilling.

So I’d like to propose expanding this idea into “one for the meal, one for the reel, and one for the feels,” inspired by my colleagues Jeff Boddy and Hannah Graf.

One for the meal keeps the lights on. It’s the client work, the pitch, the project that might not be your dream brief, but still sharpens your craft. There’s value in the repetition, testing your workflow and teamwork, the small moments of precision that make you better.

One for the reel builds your voice. It’s the work that challenges you, the kind that defines your point of view. These are the projects where you stretch creatively and show your peers and clients what you’re capable of.

And one for the feels is the work that feeds your soul. It might be small or personal. It’s the thing that exists for no one but you. You make it just because you wanted to see what happens when it gets out of your head and into the real world.

Floating between these three isn’t about balance so much as calibration and awareness. It’s how I remind myself that creative stamina isn’t about chasing highs. It’s about pacing your energy, giving yourself room to breathe, recovering, and rediscovering what you love about the work.

Staying in the Game

The truth is, we’re all playing our own version of the one-third rule. Some days you’re on fire. Some days you’re fine. Some days you’re flailing.

But if you can see each of those states as part of the process, it gets easier to see yourself staying in motion. Because you’re not judging yourself for the bad days, you’re learning from them.

That’s what stamina really is: not endurance for its own sake, but a system that lets you keep showing up with your imagination intact.

So I keep playing. I keep showing up for the meal, the reel, and the feels. And I try to remember that a creative life, like tennis, isn’t about never missing the shot. It’s about loving the game enough to play it all over again tomorrow.

Watch Michelle’s full Dash Bash talk on sustaining a creative career below.

Thank you to Mack Garrison, Meryn Hayes, and the team at dash for making this talk possible.