PhD students sometimes get the same bad advice on writing their thesis. I call this advice the Rule of Three . Typically, they get told that their thesis: Will take 3 months to writeShould have 3 results chaptersShould be 300 pages These bits of advice have one thing in common: they are all wrong. If you have been organised (see below), it should not take 3 months to write a PhD thesis.

One side effect of the trend towards digitising everything is that stuff one forgot about (or, perhaps, would like to forget about) comes back to haunt you. My alma mater , the University of Auckland is digitising theses, and my PhD thesis "Panbiogeography: a cladistic approach" is now online (hdl:2292/1999). Here's the abstract:1990. Ah, happy days...