I feel exactly the same way. I just started my second year having spent my entire first year going through admin stuff and ethics. I am planning on starting recruitment in January but currently feel like I made no progress. I feel really discouraged every time I see fellow students who started with me talking about their results or their pilot studies while I am sitting there replying to emails. However, I was told by my supervisors when I discussed this with them that it is better to put in extra time to properly set up a study because it ensures that you have everything ready for analysis once you are finished with data collection. Hope this makes you feel better; you are not the only one in this situation.