Thinking Too Much?

This is the week that I'll be talking with Dr. S about version #1 of my proposal.  In the meantime, I continue to work (re-work, and re-work) my research problems.  At this revision stage (and no telling what Dr. S will say about the research problems), I've written and rewritten the research problems...now on my third major revision.  My conclusions, thus far, are these:

1. Research PROBLEMS arise from the literature review; while
2. Research HYPOTHESES are solved by the analysis.

Now, I have absolutely NO idea if this is correct or not, but it essentially means that the literature review (Chapter 2 of five total chapters) has to be complete before the research problems are "fully cooked."  And the analysis done in Chapters 3 and 4 has to be finished in order to prove the hypotheses.  As Chapter 1 is just a write-up of the proposal outline, there's a circular problem:  I have to do all of the analysis and literature review for the dissertation in order to get my proposal outline approved.  So I'm writing a dissertation before I even know that the thing is approved?  This doesn't make any sense.  Or maybe I'm thinking too much.