This question sounds so weird that I keep not posting it although I really want to ask it! So there are no modules on my PhD... there are milestones instead, and hopefully papers, etc to come out of my research. So how do people...erm learn... or maybe I thinking more about how does one document their learning? So for example, I'm wanting to get to grasps with a particular topic... it may or may not go directly into the thesis or a paper... Do you write notes and prepare some materials that can be returned to later? Much the same as at undergrad? Or do I only write when it is going to go into the thesis? Do I just read now? It just feels like something is missing and like the potential sources are infinite (when to stop reading!). And the notes I am producing seem a bit random, like they're a drop in the ocean of what I should know. I don't know if this makes any sense. If it does to you and you're a seasoned PhD student, please reply!

I'm not sure if this will answer your questions properly, but here are some of my thoughts! In terms of output and documentation, it's really the thesis and any publications/conference presentations you do during your time - over and above that, you won't be asked to document much about your learning (unless by arrangement with your supervisor etc). I've done various types of learning during my PhD - learning about the topic itself (via my reading and note-taking), learning about the process of doing a PhD and the skills needed (via workshops at uni and my own reading) and learning specific skills (e.g. via teacher training, attending courses and reading texts on my research methods). It is pretty much self-managed though, and I think the extent of your reading and note-taking is part of the challenge - knowing what's going to help your thesis and what isn't!

I scrambled through my PhD without being systematic about this but I absolutely wish I had given it more thought - the whole process would have been less messy and stressful, I think, if I had processed my thoughts as I went along in some form other than "text of the actual thesis".

What I wish I had done was use a kind of iterative process: reading sources, making notes from them, writing down my preliminary synthesising ideas about those sources (relevance to project, half-baked ideas springboarding from them), reading more sources, making more notes, revisiting and revising previous synthesis to integrate new material and so on. Outputs for supervisor / anyone else do normally take the form of thesis chapters but I think a process like this would have helped me write better thesis chapters more smoothly -- I don't recommend my strategy of taking the whole unwieldy and neverending mass of sources and trying to synthesise it only when you are writing a thesis chapter.

I learnt a lot by writing. I had to do two 3000 word lit reviews in my first 3 months and that really helped me. Then writing annual reports helped a lot, and finally I learnt the most in the last year when I actually sat down and wrote the thesis! (Biology)

Thanks all - this is helpful.