Over the years I’ve given my students a lot of advice on planning the paper writing process: Plan backwards from your goal. Look ahead to other obligations you might have coming. Break a large task into small pieces. Schedule in lots of time for revision. Make an outline. Keep good records of your research. On and on.

So now I am myself writing a paper – a very big paper. Since I seem to have a habit of becoming a student again every several years, this is not a very unusual experience. This paper will probably be the most in depth I have ever written, however. So how am I approaching it?

Well, my first response was just to stumble through it as best I could, letting what happens, happen. Physician, heal thyself! Fortunately, my wife asks difficult questions and is not satisfied with pathetic answers. So I now have a first draft of a schedule. Since I love playing with applications, I have put my schedule into a Gantt chart. (Click on the image above to enlarge.) Any thoughts, my dear readers? What’s missing? What is too ambitious? To what have I allocated too much time?