Terence Tao

I have a lot less free time than I had previously.

I mean, mostly by choice.

I mean, obviously I have the option to sort of decline.

So I decline a lot of things.

I could decline even more.

Or I could acquire a reputation of being so unreliable that people don't even ask anymore.

I love the different algorithms here.

This is great.

It's always an option.

But, you know, there are things that are...

I mean, I don't spend as much time as I do as a postdoc, you know, just working on one problem at a time or fooling around.

I still do that a little bit.

But yeah, as you advance in your career, the more soft skills, so math somehow front-loads all the technical skills to the early stages of your career.

So yeah, as a postdoc, as a publisher or parish, you're

You're incentivized to basically focus on proving very technical theorems, so prove yourself as well as prove the theorems.

But then as you get more senior, you have to start mentoring and giving interviews and trying to shape direction of the field both research-wise and sometimes you have to do various administrative things.

And it's kind of the right social contract because you need to work in the trenches to see what can help mathematicians.

Some recognition is necessarily important.

But yeah, it's...

It's also important to not let these things take over your life and only be concerned about getting the next big award or whatever.