It depends on what you mean by "own your property". Do you actually own it outright or is it mortgaged (i.e. owned by your lender until you pay it off)? Anyway, the upshot is how much capital (after the buying and selling transaction costs, say between £5 and £10K) you have from the sale of your existing property to use as deposit. If you have a large deposit (e.g. 50k or 25% of the value of the property), lenders will see you as low risk because if you default on the loan they can seize your deposit and safely cover their costs and the current downward trend in property prices. I'd make a point of telling them that you have a large deposit and see if that makes a difference.

Don't underestimate the skills you've developed in the world of work. They are a major selling point for you and will counteract alot of the suggestions that not doing an MA will somehow inhibit you, it won't. If the world of work taught you time and project management then you're half way there. At the end of the day, a supervisor wants someone who they think stands a good chance of getting the job done rather than academic brilliance alone.

I've been collecting data overseas and these days I'm an occasional visitor on here (and even an occasional post!). I seem to be taking on watcher tendencies me thinks!

Yeah, when I looked a couple of years ago, most were generic arts-based books. I wonder whether the specifics of each scientific discipline make it difficult to write a one size fits all book.

Well, former member of Steps I'm not immediately aware of any, but it might be worth asking your sups for copies of some previous successful theses from your department and borrow their style. Anything interesting fallen out of Amazon?

*other

Well, if you can't get it in the library or online, why not email the lead author and ask for a copy of it? I do this all the time and nearly everyone sends them. It also represents an opportunity to network with said author. Give it a go and explain a little about what you're doing as they'll often point you in the direction of author articles of interest.

A few points here which might help (a bit).

1) Work out your best working hours of the day. If you're a night owl then a 9-5 is not going to be as productive as evening working.
2) I find that the first hour of work is very vulnerable to distraction. If you can force yourself through that hour without procrastinating/surfing then you'll generate some momentum and should be able to work well for the next few hours.
3) I'm also vulnerable to suddenly thinking about something (non-PhD)I'd like to look at on the internet, going off to look at it, then looking at various other things, thereby killing half an hour or more. If you must browse, note down what you want to look at then look at it during non-work time.

If only I practised what I preached!

They're far from dim. They have "Avoidance" departments dedicated to comparing your claim against the small print and using creative licence where necessary to make sure they don't have to pay out. As Olivia says, the biggest con of all is medical insurance which is extremely difficult to get a successful claim on (only one in 5 claims ever succeeds). Basically, if you went to the doctor as a child with, say a cough, they would use this as grounds to saying that you were pre-disposed to having a lung condition as an adult and not pay out if you got ill that way (as a friend of mine found out). Suffice to say, I'll not bother with helath insurance, thank you.

Also take time to get to know your PhD peers at the conference as that could work to your advantage at a later date.

There was lots of other bits of advice which came up which i can't remember right now but is in a handout i have somewhere, but these are a few pointers. Enjoy.

I actually went on a half day networking course the other week. If you're going to a conference, decide in advance who you want to talk to and then clue up on some of their recent work so you can ask them about it at the conference. You could even email them in advance and say that if they've got a few minutes at the conference, can we have a discussion about X. Anyone worth knowing should respond well to that. It may also be that as the conference progresses, someone stands out as a person you'd like to have a discussion with. In which case see if you can engage with them. If that person is a bigwig and is permanently surrounded by their fanclub, one way to get to speak to them is to stand next to them when breaking to go to the buffet or getting tea/coffee as at that point they're most likely to be free of the hangers on. As an in, you could take about how nice the sausage rolls are and start from there.

... In terms of reading an taking notes, it's horses for courses - whatever works for you. I like to keep electronic and paper copies of all my papers, but I work with the paper copies. Some people will sit with the paper and their computer and immediately type in interesting points they find in the paper. I slightly vary that approach by highlighting points and annotating points on the paper (this allows me to work rapidly through the paper without stopping). Then when I've finished it, I'll go back and use my scrawlings to make notes on my computer, noting its Endnote reference number so I can cross reference if needed. If you have Endnote, you can even copy and paste your notes into the "Research Notes" section for the paper's Endnote entry.

Other people prefer to make handwritten notes as they go but, for me anyway, it appears to double effort because you end up having to type them up later anyway. Clearly, having a laptop that you can take to libraries with you is very useful!

This has been raised before. The upshot is that it varies from person to person. I can't really see a need for 12 hours a day unless a specific deadline is looming large. It is after all a marathon so don't burn yourself out in the first few miles.

Relating hours to a literature review, if you're clear what exactly you need from the literature, what is directly relevant, what is interesting but not directly relevant, and what is not relevant then you can have a very focussed and disciplined attack on the literature and work sensible hours. Sometimes you can read too much at the expense of actually getting on with doing the PhD itself.....

I tend to think that your life is in a state of flux when doing a PhD, so marrying at unsettled time of your life is risky. Why the haste? You have all the time in the world!

As an aside, picking up on what PC_Geek said I have also happened to notice what my heightened and sustained stress levels are doing for my libido. If I was single it wouldn't particularly bother me, but I'm not. Not good.

I am on the other forum!