No matter how good the advice you get, you are likely to find you need to change strategy, possibly multiple times. It's hard to learn how to do research and d

No matter how good the advice you get, you are likely to find you need to change strategy, possibly multiple times. It's hard to learn how to do research and development by being told things, which is why we have the apprentice-like PhD system. Don't be afraid to change tack completely or give up on things. The most important thing I learned during my PhD (though too late) was how important disproving and discarding ideas quickly is. Repeatedly doing the simplest, quickest, easiest thing to disprove your current ideas can take you a long way. Persisting because you believe (without doubting and checking) is a recipe for wasted time and effort. This applies both to research and to systems for notes, citations, development, etc., and you shouldn't underestimate plain text files or even handwriting (even though paper can't be searched automatically, you can flick through and compare pages quickly, and can scan for backups and type up anything important). I wasted too much time trying to figure out and use technological ways of doing things. It's also often hard to drag collaborators into good technology practices. I haven't continued in research, so take this with that grain of salt, but I don't think I'm saying anything inaccurate. PS "you're" means "you are"; you want "your".