[oldmanjoe]

Ensure you have (at least) monthly meetings with a supervisor. This provides good feedback and stops you getting lost in the weeds. It helps if you have small milestones attached to each meeting (reading a book/paper, editing a chapter, etc).

A sign the PhD is going awry is when they stop attending regular meetings and duck out of your way in the corridor. ;-) Then they start getting stressed

[pserwylo]

Haha, yeah, I have experienced both ends of the stick. One supervisor I get along with beautifully, we've been meeting essentially every week for the last two years, and she has full access to the JIRA install I'm using to log my research tasks against. The other we just chat in the elevator, and have a meeting every couple of months or so.