Most dissertation pain comes not from the lab work but from the writing — chasing references, fixing citation styles, rediscovering papers you've read but can't find. Three small habits help.
Use a reference manager from day one. Zotero is free and integrates with Word and LibreOffice. Save every paper you read, even the ones you don't think you'll cite — you will, eventually.
Learn boolean and field-restricted search. "Title contains X AND author is Y" beats wading through a thousand unrelated results. Most databases support it.
Set up citation alerts on three or four key papers in your area. New citations are how you find the papers that came out after your first literature review.