Michael Nielsen

Terry is one of the world's leading mathematicians, and produces significant mathematical papers (and books, and blog posts) at a remarkable rate. Interesting to read about time management from a great and prolific scientist. - Michael Nielsen

This is a really great article, I'd recommend it to anyone whose work includes multiple tasks/subtasks that they prioritize themselves. - j1m

Wow, he writes physical letters, and I gather they're real letters, not bill payments. - ⓞnor

"Another thing is that my ability to do any serious mathematics fluctuates greatly from day to day; sometimes I can think hard on a problem for an hour, other times I feel ready to type up the full details of a sketch that I or my coauthors already wrote, and other times I only feel qualified to respond to email and do errands, or just to take a walk or even a nap." +1 to that. - ⓞnor

Yep, matching your task to your fluctuating mental capacity is key. - j1m

Dark family secret: Terry writes LaTeX using Microsoft Word with some heinous custom macros. Not because of any explicit reason, his workflow just kind of evolved that way, partly because his IM network (I forget which one) more or less locked him to Windows. At least, that's what he was doing when I was looking over his shoulder in 2005. - Nigel Tao

Nigel - yikes! Emacs has a great Windows implementation, with excellent Latex support, using Auctex. I like using Word for outlining and brainstorming, but would never use it to write Latex in a million years... - Michael Nielsen

Wow, Nige, what does he do to preview the latex? - Rob Schonberger

Preview!? This is the Chuck Norris of Math we're talking about here. - Nigel Tao

I want chuck norris to write a blog about time management now. - Rob Schonberger

Chuck Norris doesn't manage time. Time waits for Chuck Norris. Sorry... - Neil Saunders

Neil .. lol - Deepak

Dark family secret: Chuck does all of his stunts using Word macros too. - Jim Norris

For those of you looking at Emacs for LaTeX, here's what AucTeX mode looks like: http://www.gnu.org/software/au... - Amit Patel

"The thing to avoid is to drop a task when it is only partially finished, without any good “closure”; it then either gets lost, or weighs on one’s mind and prevents one from fully thinking about something else, or has to be redone from an earlier point when one picks it up again. But one doesn’t have to finish each task off completely as it comes, as long as it can be picked up later." Interesting, because this is something I am trying to become more aware of. - Clare Dibble