Working Backwards - or - The Make Work Program

Over the last year working on my various pieces of paid and personal research, I have become known to do things the long way. I am constantly being told that I am making more work than is necessary to get the task done. Yet, each time I am faced with a new project, I cannot fathom any other way to get from point A to point Z without going through the whole alphabet.

Last summer, I worked on creating a bibliography for our research group. I had to search and judge what articles and books were quintessential to a game studies biblio. Now, to be fair, I did not have to start from scratch. There was a small biblio in place, and there are several online. But to get outside the box, to be as up to date as possible, I ended up reading the bibliographies of those references already out there to see who kept popping up over and over again. Took along time to go through it all, but in the end, I felt I had a decent grasp on the literature. In this case, I was told that I made things longer/more complicated than necessary.

I am currently working on a methodology paper, where I have to search and select relevant articles/books on a particular type of method. The only problem is that the method itself is an "outside the box" method, so there is no comprehensive list per se. We want to know which articles are the most cited, pertinent etc to what we are trying to accomplish. I went to the library, even enlisted the help of the librarian and the sociology librarian. They were slightly baffled as to a short, quick path to get the information I needed. So, in the end, I am returning to my "make work project" finding anything out there that appears relevant, reading their bibliographies and trying to draw a web from there. It will be worth it in the end (imo) but taking the long way around these things tends to eat up valuable time. Often, I'm left asking myself why i always have to walk all around the outside of the box to get the job done.