[DataJunkie]

I am going to assume you will be taking classes for a while. Most of my advice is in regards to the dissertation.

This one is common sense, but I violated it. Pick an advisor that works in the area you are interested in. I ended up picking an advisor that I got along well with, and that had the same open-source philosophy that I had, but was not in my field of interest. While he was brilliant, it was bad. He ended up retiring and I had to pick a new advisor, this time in my field. I wish I worked with him the whole time because he was much more constructive regarding my field of research and probably would have helped me open more doors.

The biggest productivity win for me was Dropbox [about 5 years ago] (with the extended history option). I made several attempts at using Git, SVN etc. and Dropbox just made everything so much easier. The actual data I simulated took up TBs of space, so of course that wasn't in Dropbox, just my manuscript, research sources etc. I accidentally deleted chapters and the backup feature made them easy to retrieve. My work was synced on all of my devices.

After leaving a job, I moved to the mountains and dedicated 2 years to finishing the dissertation. Someone wrote a book about finishing your dissertation 15 minutes at a time. That's sort of what I practiced. During the day, I would keep active by mountain biking and hiking, and then in the evening I would spend 2-3 hours writing code or writing the manuscript.

It worked out nicely.