First, depending upon your institution and discipline, writing and formatting your thesis will vary. Thus, we advise that the first step should be for you to understand how your thesis will have to be written and submitted: the file format, the format of the references, chapters, table of content, and images. If you choose to write your thesis using Authorea, you have a clear advantage: you can start writing immediately and focus on the content and you can worry about the formatting later! (Authorea formats documents in one click)

Arguably one of the hardest parts of thesis writing is the mental hurdle of simply starting to write. You know how long it is going to be and how hard it will be. This can be intimidating and may be a hurdle in itself. Start writing and you can come clean up the document/chapters later. Also, seek feedback! Authorea makes collaboration on theses easy so that you can seek comments and feedback early and often from colleagues and your advisor.

Depending upon your skill set and field of research you may choose to write your thesis differently. Physicists, mathematicians, and others from the hard sciences might prefer LaTeX, which has many benefits for thesis writing, like professional typesetting. Alternatively, learning LaTeX might be too difficult for a researcher and thus may make the overall process even more difficult.  Authorea allows you to mix and match these formats and write in a truly format-neutral environment. Yes, it is both for those that have no experience with LaTeX and those that exclusively write in LaTeX.

Preparing yourself for a Master or PhD thesis is a challenging yet rewarding intellectual, physical and emotional adventure. We highly recommend reading Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis by MIT Press and start writing on Authorea.