Familiarizing oneself with state-of-the-art at the beginning of a PhD From my research internship experiences (my previous University didn't really focus on research much) and what my current advisers told me, a general flow of a PhD is like any other long(er)-time project:

familiarize oneself with state-of-the-art on the subject

generate your own ideas (by trial-and-error) and integrate with current approaches
(with this phase becoming a lot fuzzier the more advanced your &quot;project&quot; is)

write it up for the world to know.


As a fresh PhD student, I'm currently in the middle of familiarizing myself with the state of the art, following the advice of many older students (&quot;be a brave soldier in the beginning and do and read everything your advisers throw/send/e-mail your way&quot;). And I do understand the importance of it (in fact, more often than not, I love it). But, it does give one an impression of self-uselessness sometimes (I have a talk with myself every few weeks or so to remind myself of my motivation and resolve the &quot;uselessness&quot; issue).
So, my question is: Typically, how much time would a fresh PhD student spend on going through state-of-the-art at the beginning of his/her PhD?
And some sub-questions:

is it expected/typical to produce some kind of output (articles?) during this period?
what kind of output is expected at the end of this period?
what would be some indicators that this period is ending which a student himself can notice


In the end, just to provide some context: I'm doing a PhD in Europe, and we have a limit of 3 years for a PhD (sometimes extended for up to 6 months) and I'm studying Computer Science.
I don't think there is a clear transition between “familiarizing oneself with the subject” and “being an expert in this topic, and generate new ideas and approaches”. The transition is gradual, and it's called “the PhD”.

However, there are ways to quantify this evolution. For example, ask yourself: in a discussion with your advisor and a few other experts on a topic related to your PhD, how able are you to make useful comments and suggestions? How often do you come to your advisor saying “I have tried to do X because I read about it and I think it can apply to my issue”?

Regarding the written “output” of the beginning of a PhD, it pretty much depends on you and your advisor. Mostly, the output is knowledge in your mind, but it can also be useful to make notes (both for yourself and your advisor) on each subtopic you discover. For myself, as an advisor, I ask students to contribute bibliographic notes (written or orally) every now and then, for me and other students of the group who work on related topics.