I'm a new Masters by Research student (been going about 2 months). I have my research topic chosen and am currently working on editing my research proposal. Apart from that I have nothing to do but read papers which doesn't take up a lot of my time? Did anyone else feel like it was a slow start for them? I feel like I should be doing something!

Yep this is pretty normal - just check your supervisor is ok with your progress and if so you will likely be fine.

It's great to have free time - put it to use, learn coding, excel, learn a language, take an online course to fill your time at uni. As long as your supervisor is okay with your progress this could improve your CV later.

Haha. I remember feeling this way for the first six months of PhD. Don't worry - you'll get busy soon! That said, you can be smart about how you use this time. Make sure your work is structured: you can map out the issues/conversations in your field that you need to be familiar with and write up good notes on the relevant papers you read; brush up your methodological competence; this might be a good time to look for some early teaching opportunities - perhaps you can give a guest lecture somewhere?

Don't make the mistake of committing to lots of extra curricular stuff because when the workload kicks in (which it will any week now), it could easily turn into an intense and very stressful juggling act.

Thanks for all the advice! Actually about a week after posting this everything started to pick up so I've got a little more to do now :)

Yeah,I felt the same to when I was starting out. I did a course to be a personal support worker http://www.cestarcollege.com/courses/health-care/personal-support-worker/ in cestar college.You will get busy later on just make sure that you use your free time properly so that you could include it into your CV later on.