See, that kind of hostile attitude is what usually turns people away from any advice you might offer. Your assumption that I haven't read the article -- because my wording of my interpretation of it differs from what you expect -- is unwarranted.
The article itself was rather interesting and I certainly didn't mean to imply that metacognition is useless. From my point of view, not engaging in any metacognition ever will eventually lead to what I call problems, among which are unwarranted assumptions and failure to consider alternatives. Those are "problems" that I like to "catch" and correct in my own thinking. However, I do believe that one has to draw a line somewhere; otherwise, one risks indulging in what another commenter named "mental masturbation".
As for personal growth, I believe there will always be limits to our thinking that cannot be (directly) surpassed by more thinking ;)
I didn't intend to sound hostile. I think we're talking past each other here :)
Also, I agree with you 100% on mental masturbation. (I also blog occasionally @ http://www.justfuckingship.com/). But I am tired of every freakin web app looking, acting, and being essentially the same.
We also define problems differently. I think it's a bigger issue that all web app are basically the same, than if a given individual sits and thinks too hard and never does anything. But that's because I have barely any problems with executing any more... because I've worked on it.
Have you heard of the categorization of failures?
Failure Level 1 - Doing the right thing, but doing it badly.
Failure Level 2 - Doing the wrong thing, whether you do it well or badly.
I mostly like to poke people about Level 2. No blog/article/motivational speaker/whatever can do everything so I pick my battles :)
And, if you read the original article, you'll see it's not about "catching problems" at all.