How frequently should PhD students update their advisor? I'm a 1st year phd student in math. My advisor adopts a more ambiguous meeting policy that I approach him whenever I want to talk. So I was sending him long emails on a biweekly basis with updates of what I read and thought about in that duration, out of my own initiative. Of course, a lot of it is not substantial progress and probably doesn't even worth reporting. I do this because the actual meeting is sporadic and the frequency is definitely below once per several months. So I feel that I should update him on a regular basis. My advisor didn't say stop sending the updates but just stopped responding to them. I guess it is kind of annoying seeing a lot of stuff from your students without actual breakthrough. Before I ask him anything, I just wonder what would be the norm of phd student updating their advisors regarding frequency and whether they should update without any actual progress.
It depends on your situation. I meet with each of my students once a week via Zoom. When I was a student, I met with my advisor rarely. I only gave him finished results.