Usually if you're working off of some established framework, you can learn to think within that framework and implement revisions in accordance with your person and your accumulated experiences.
However if you set out to think something through from scratch (if a conventional body of knowledge fails, for example), something frustrating can happen: logical possibilities branch out every which way, and you can follow any given thread as far as you have the energy and attention span to do so.
Physical reality and intense life experiences tend to shape the boundaries of where these possibilities can go, but even then it can be difficult to establish a coherent conception of things. Fortunately there is a bed of accumulated human knowledge to help with that, but if you are starting from scratch, you also have to learn how to pick and choose from this bed without getting lost.
Accumulated life experience, in accordance with your own character, helps to further delineate the boundaries that keep those thoughts from running away. Also repetition; you are you to a certain extent, and experience the world as you over and over again, which eventually becomes more rigid over time as experience accumulates and fluid learning gives way to crystallized thought.
It also helps to live in a way that is conducive to intensive reading and writing. Right now, I haven't quite been living that way, which is OK. There's been more music and socializing and intoxication. I do always look forward to retreating to my cave and doing some reading and writing, but I don't get the same effects as when I spend much of my time in solitude with a regular schedule. No problem. Just trying different things and seeing what comes of it.
