 When you're just embarking on your doctoral studies, the last thing on your mind is how to finish it. But I'm here to tell you that planning your doctoral studies will not only help you finish your PhD degree on time and with great success, but also make the process of getting there easier and more pleasant. The first thing you should know when you start your PhD is what the regulations are. Whichever university you're registered at will have some sort of requirements, regulations, or plan that they expect every PhD student to follow before their dissertation defense. Look into it. Early on, it's a good thing to have it in mind. Some universities will expect you to publish one or two peer-reviewed papers, some will expect an international conference talk, and some maybe a large-scale lecture at university. It's always good to be prepared and plan for these things because what happens if your budget runs out and you can't attend that international conference? Look ahead and plan right from the start. But one of the most important things I've learned as a PhD student was taught to me by my mentor. He is very adamant that having a timeline and a good timeline can make your experience as a PhD student much better. What we do every couple of months is spread out my PhD studies on a timeline with three months, six months, nine months, and a year to know where we stand. In three months, will I have a paper? In six months, will I have to be applying for talks? In nine months, what is there to expect? And of course, three months before your dissertation defense, you need to start writing at the latest. As much as we would like it to be, you start of A, you do research, you publish paper one, publish paper two, publish paper three, defend the wonderful visas. Unfortunately, life comes in the way. It might be your studies. You might have to move with your partner. Your experiment might not work as well as you had hoped. For that reason, it's always good to have a contingency plan. Whatever research project you start, make sure that there are some things that you can use from the project to publish or show as good work during your dissertation defense. And always make sure to regularly check in with your supervisor or doctoral advisor and not avoid them if things go wrong. If things do go wrong, the worst thing you can do is avoid your supervisor. If there's one person who can help you figure things out and get back on the right path, it's them. It can, of course, sometimes be scary to talk to the person who's technically your boss and tell them, hey, I'm not doing that great with this or this experiment isn't working or I can't calculate this. But if you don't do that, what's the alternative? Waiting another couple of months? Wasting time? It's better to be straight out. Maybe it helps. Maybe a conversation and a discussion helps set you right on the right path again. And one thing that I find to be very helpful for me personally, and I hope for you as well, is keeping a to-do list and checklists. So it's a whole system that you can organize around your PhDs. If you know that your university requires two papers, you need to do two papers. Plan out your timeline, have six months for each paper, have something done. It doesn't have to be published immediately, but have a draft done by them. Have a checklist for every month checking in with your supervisor. Have a to-do list for every week reviewing your notes and summarizing them in a nice review file. Now all these things will not lead you to a highly successful and groundbreaking doctoral dissertation. But what they will do is make your life much easier when the time comes to both write it and defend it. It's really never too late to start planning for your dissertation defense and organizing your doctoral studies around it. Best of luck.