Criteria for Research Searches?

As I contemplate the current research tools, books, lectures, and classes that are available for genealogy and family history researchers, I am struck more than ever how we lack a current criteria or checklist for successful searches. Allow me to think online and give some input, please.

Online databases are added daily! Pedigrees proliferate! Home webpages fill my computer screen daily! Tomorrow the church records that I need to finally find out who William Dupuy's wife was may be online- today, I don't even know if they exist. I can write letters, read local research technique books and stay abreast of current laws and genealogy search engines, but I haven't felt for years now that I have an adequate checklist for research like I used to, in the golden, olden microfilm days. I check the usual spots and then some, but I can't help but feel like I should already HAVE the answers to many of my long-standing brick walls.

Does anyone else feel this way?