One of the main problems students encounter in research is determining the amount of resources to consult among the infinite number of credible online sources when attempting to answer research questions within a short duration. The apparent absence of literature on a good method for resolving this problem leaves students overwhelmed, anxious, prone to procrastination, and horrified by research. Below, I explore what I call a "conscious problem-setting and minimum solution" approach as a technique for efficiently managing the enormity of online information.

First, this approach involves a realization and consciousness that all research is about problem-solving, whether the problems are theoretical or practical. The second is defining the problem one's research seeks to solve as clearly as possible. The third and last step is defining as clearly as possible the minimum acceptable solution or the minimum threshold of the research answer that may count as a legitimate solution to the problem one intends to solve. With this realization, consciousness, and the employment of these strategies, one automatically limits the resources one needs to consult and thus makes many credible sources on one's research question negligible. An illustration is instructive.

Imagine you need to answer this question: How should I conduct myself to improve social justice in my university? There is probably over a decade-long body of resources online you may consult to answer this question; however, you only have three months. The following is how the approach suggested above would help you limit the extent of the research you need to do while allowing you to have a good answer to your question or a good solution to your problem with a clear conscience. Since the problem is already clearly defined, you should proceed to determine a minimum acceptable solution, namely, any strategy or course of action that can demonstrably increase social justice at your university. It does not entail finding the best possible solution. It is simply about finding a strategy that works, in this case, one that makes the situation demonstrably better, even if a little. The minimal solution, so defined, implies that only studying the work done by some previous successful social justice activists in your university may be good enough. Thus, instead of researching how to improve social justice more generally, say by studying all the accounts of successful social justice movements in history, you only need to investigate past successful social justice actions in your university.

The preceding demonstrates the efficiency of the problem-setting and minimum-solution approach. However, this does not imply that the method is infallible. One's sense of the extent of research needed to find a minimum acceptable solution may be incorrect. For example, after studying the past successful social-justice improvement projects in your university, you may learn that some of the conditions for their success, perhaps the presence or absence of a certain technology, are no longer obtainable in your context. That would then expand the research required for your minimal solution; you may need to further inquire about the possibility of finding an alternative technology with similar impacts. You may also need to study current projects taken up by students in other universities to improve social justice on their campuses. Any number of adjustments may have to be made to make up for your incorrect projections.

But given that you have already defined a minimally acceptable solution, the extent you should research remains more limited and well-guided than otherwise. Even if one's sense of the minimally acceptable solution is wrong, this approach has the advantage of getting one started. And the attendant joy of proving oneself wrong and sometimes right makes one often embrace research as worthwhile.

Further, one may legitimately not know or be able to have a clear sense of what a minimally acceptable solution to a problem may be before starting a research project. At the frontier of research is the pursuit of answers whose form and content are unknown to the most intelligent inquirers. However, it is crucial to remember that a minimally acceptable solution exists while conducting research. And this consciousness itself can prime one to recognize it when one stumbles on it.

Researchers often go into research with the hope of maybe taking longer than would ultimately become possible or rational, given certain mitigating circumstances. However, when unforeseen conditions warrant the termination of research before the schedule arises, experienced researchers often see within studies they have done the possibility of inferring and articulating minimally acceptable (and useful) solutions.

The possibility of finding a minimally acceptable solution to a research question or problem, without having to read everything, when undertaking research is a source of courage and encouragement to begin. To end this entry, it is perhaps important to note that stumbling on a minimally acceptable solution does not necessarily imply halting research; one may go on researching if one has the time and resources, if one enjoys the process or if one does not seem to have anything better to do.