Before you begin your course, prepare a detailed plan that outlines your goals and sets timelines for each. During the doctoral program, you will need to complete the mandatory courses of study, help with teaching assignments, take the comprehensive exams, work on publications, and work on your dissertation topic. This is one course where too many variables beyond your control influence your progress from one stage to the next. However, having a goal in mind ensures you don't go off-track.
It is easy to get overwhelmed by all the things you are expected to do as a doctoral student. It is important you get to work at the earliest on factors within your control. Take all the courses during the specified terms, complete your teaching assignments, and take the comprehensive exams at the first available opportunity. Not only will this clear the path for the work ahead, it will also give you the much-needed boost of self-confidence to overcome the doubts that a Ph.D. program thrusts on all students.
Your advisor is going to be the most important person in your journey towards completing the program. Interact regularly and openly, honor the commitments you make, and keep him informed of your progress (or lack of it). Ask for suggestions, make note of his advice and adopt these in your work. Ask for permission and read the theses produced by other students whom this advisor has guided in the past; it will help you get a realistic picture of what is expected from your work.
Select a topic for which you have a passion but don't harbor the notion that you have to produce an earth-shattering piece of work. In reality, it is more important that your dissertation research work meets the specified criteria. Be careful when selecting a topic on which little work has been done; it may mean an abbreviated literature review, which will not go down well with doctoral advisory committees. If you must do it however, confirm that you will find relevant data in other intersecting fields that will help you get your topic approved.
Writing can be tough for most people, and it is easy to get into the habit of postponing this important task. It is however imperative that you inculcate this habit because it helps you put things down before you forget them. Besides, writing in a good way to keep track of progress and gives shape and form to your thoughts. Write short research papers for publication, in consultation with your advisor. The number of publications you produce during your doctoral program will be an important criterion used to judge your worth.