This post treats doctoral work as a job with unusually loose supervision. Its advice is blunt: write regularly, manage email and other interruptions, and stop treating intelligence as the main condition for finishing.
Some of the language is harsher than I would now use with a student. The practical concern remains familiar. Flexible deadlines can hide the absence of a workable routine until a project is already in trouble.
Related: Writer’s block as signal · The good-enough draft · Research Musings (2014)