A bit of self-knowledge goes a long way. If you are prone to procrastination, tend to have grandiose visions of what you’re going to do, like to avoid conflict,

A bit of self-knowledge goes a long way. If you are prone to procrastination, tend to have grandiose visions of what you’re going to do, like to avoid conflict, reach for various ad hoc rationalisations when you underperform, like to really perfect your work, prefer to work by yourself, get easily derailed when you hit a snag… then guess what, you’re going to suffer a lot working on very open ended projects like a PhD (myself included). The trick is to acknowledge your own proclivities from the start and either don’t do a PhD or accept that every single day you must fight to the death with your own torpor.