The answer is in the blog comments: >Dear Terry, >Have you ever considered writing a blog post on “Bourgain’s toolbox” summarizing the kinds of techniques use

The answer is in the blog comments: >Dear Terry, >Have you ever considered writing a blog post on “Bourgain’s toolbox” summarizing the kinds of techniques used continually (without explanation) in his papers? >[...] Tao's final conclusion, besides other hints like http://www.tricki.org/ http://www.tricki.org/ is: > I think that ultimately the best way to acquire these tools is to constantly be exposed to interesting new mathematics, whether it is through reading a challenging paper from an expert, or listening to a talk on a topic outside your own specialty, or by working (particularly with collaborators) on a problem outside of your own comfort zone. Bourgain is not the only author whose writings happen to be particularly worth investing the effort to properly read; I for instance found reading Szemeredi’s work or Perelman’s work to be a broadly similar experience, and I am sure that there are several other mathematicians with this property also.