How to respond to questions about my own progress in my PhD I'm a PhD student and sometimes it happens that my advisor will ask me how I think my PhD is going. I'm not sure how to come up with a good objective answer to this question. Mostly because I don't know if things are going to slow or fast etc. 

How can I provide a good answer to this question? I guess I can point out if things are going as planned, but this doesn't really answer the question.
I used to answer to such questions by describing the current concrete state of my research:


recently accepted/submitted papers
papers being prepared/written
upcoming plans


I then left it up to the asker whether that is enough information or whether they want to make any more specific enquiries.