Over the seven years of my PhD (Physics), I was first or second author on less than 5 papers (3 iirc). However, I am really happy with the quality of those few papers, and so were the reviewers on my thesis and, ultimately, my employer after I defended. Unless you want to stay in academia and become a professor, the quantity is not that important.

Have a frank conversation with your advisor. If you are out of ideas, I bet they aren't. You are a student, not an independent researcher, so the expectation should not be that you are the sole driver behind the direction of your work. As a personal anecdote, I majorly changed the direction of my thesis after about three years in because the experiments were just really not working. It led to my degree taking longer, but I was seriously lost in the wilderness of discovery until I had a series of discussions with my advisor about where we could pivot the work that I had already done.

[–] someacnt@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Thanks a lot, I should talk to my advisor. That said, they are very busy; I took a mistake of going to a busy advisor..

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Why are is your advisor so busy? Who is paying them to be busy? Is there enough cash to go around? You gotta weasel yourself in there for a piece of that pie...