Thinking about Thinking

I was just reading a post in Life Hack. It made my head hurt.

Normally, I get this from reading Conversation Agent, which is a wonderful, deep thinking site for people much brighter than me. But, as I say, I can generate this effect almost anywhere. This time, it was the question 'what makes someone an expert', on the LifeHack site. I don't agree with what the author says, to some degree, but what it really made me think about was the process of thinking and absorbing knowledge, period. I fear that as I get older, my thinking is getting more rigid, and my ability to easily absorb and slice 'n dice concepts is waning. I find that I tend to need concepts to be very clearly laid out for me -- almost an A, then B, then C; no branching logic, please -- and since most intelligent people don't write that way, I either have to do it myself, or get overwhelmed fairly quickly. Which is scary, because I want to think about these things, want to have an opinion on them, want to incorporate their good points into my own thought process; want to be able to lucidly and cogently explain why I disagree, when I do.

I need WD-40 for the brain, I think.