I. Goals and objectives
A. Topic should be of interest to you
B. Topic should be of interest to the intellectual community (How do you know?)
1. Should be other scholars who have written about related topics but not provided an answer, or an adequate answer to it (in short, you need to know the literature to know whether its of interest to the intellectual community)
2. Should be of interest to at least three/four faculty members (who are representative, if not perfectly so) of the intellectual community
C. Topic must be "doable"
II. Strategies for achieving a completed dissertation/thesis.
A. Be strategic in your choice of topics - doesn't need to be a "hot" topic but does need to be one that is likely to still be of interest to the intellectual community four years from now, when you complete it!
B. Be strategic in your choice of faculty - choose faculty based on those who can help you intellectually and career-wise
C. Know the literature well - both broadly on all topics in your subfield and in other subfields and specifically related to the topic you plan to write on.
D. Know your methodological options and choose wisely -- make sure the method or methods you decide to use are appropriate to the questions you want to ask and to the sort of jobs you want to make yourself attractive to. Often having more methodological skills can be helpful.
III. Process
A. Its iterative -- you will have to do and re-do and re-re-do most steps in your thesis or dissertation
B. Write early and often, i.e., every day!
C. In Ron Mitchell's personal opinion, many obstacles that people face in writing a dissertation or thesis are psychological rather than intellectual -- it is worth being self-conscious about what things "get in the way" of you writing your thesis and trying to find ways to keep those obstacles from preventing you from completing your thesis.
D. "Learn your rhythm" - each of us has a different rhythm to how we write/research/edit/discuss with others/etc. The "best" rhythm is the one that works for you in terms of your goals for getting a good thesis written as quickly as possible.
E. Create deadlines for yourself -- start with the date you want to graduate and back up from there. If you do this, you will most likely find that you are already three months behind schedule!
IV. Logistics and mechanisms
A. Keep a clear calendar from now til you are finished on your desk or wall or computer at all times -- and look at it!
B. Learn to use the Templates and Styles elements of Word (or the equivalent in your own word-processing program) -- these save you TONS of time spent on formatting and thereby allow you to focus more on content. Takes 2 hours or less to learn how to use styles and templates for formatting and will repay that investment a ton when you are trying to finalize your thesis. Ask any student who is currently finishing the formatting of their thesis -- either they will tell you they use templates and styles and so it was easy, or they will tell you they don't, and they wish they had!
C. Learn to use Endnote or any other bibliographic database program now -- no matter where you are in the process, it will reduce the time and improve the formatting of your citations and references. Ask any student who is currently finishing the references for their thesis -- either they will tell you they use Endnote, or a similar program and so it was easy, or they will tell you they don't, and they wish they had!