Although I have previous experience in the lab and presenting some data, you never realized of all the details you need to know until you do your own research project. I want to write some tips that I think everybody should consider before starting or at the very beginning to avoid loads of stress during the writing period.

1. During your project neither you nor your supervisor decide how much time you need to spend in the lab. Experiments decide that for you. Your working hours start and finish with the experiment planned. Make sure you have everything you need before starting and do not make things in a hurry, as it is easy to make mistakes. It is better to work until late but have reliable results.
2. Make sure the number of samples and repeats you are going to use are enough to do stats analysis. Before starting it is better to ask someone who knows. There is a service at Uni that allows you to ask one of the stats professors any doubt you have if you book an appointment.
3. Living organism take time to grow and they are expose to infections and other conditions that may damage them. If possible grow more material than you need, it can be useful.
4. t-test and ANOVA are not the answers for all of your analysis. You have to make sure your data is normal before applying any of them and if it is not; you should look for an alternative such as Wilcoxon. I am not an expert in stats but if we know that a t-test is not the correct way to analyse our data it does not matter that a previous publication uses for a similar set of data, we should do better.
5. Find out all the little details in the moment you are doing your experiment and note them down in your lab book. There are some things that take time to find out and the sooner the better. If you are growing plants make sure you know the growing conditions (CO2, hours of light, temperature, intensity of light, etc.). If you are using a chemical find out the concentration and the brand if necessary. If you have mutants find out which lines are they and where do they have the mutations.
6. Do not wait to analyse your data. If something went wrong or you need to repeat something the sooner you find out the better.
7. Try to have different lines of research open. Sometimes we are looking for chimeras but if we have different options (for example different mutants) the possibilities of finding something exciting are higher.
8. Do not overload yourself with experiments. It is good to have different doors open so you have a back up but not too many as you need time to do what you decide to do as better as possible.
9. Try to find the source. If you are doing an experiment try to look for the literature in which a similar experiment was done. Sometimes what other person of our group has done is useful to us but other times the best option for what we are looking at is in the literature.
10. DO NOT LEAVE WRITING FOR THE VERY END. Start writing your material and methods while you are doing your experiments. Carry on with results. Introduction and discussion are easier to organize once you have your data analysed.