A far more insidious problem nowadays in terms of imposed structure is the habit people have of making a list (as the OP does) as if this is a substitute for pr

A far more insidious problem nowadays in terms of imposed structure is the habit people have of making a list (as the OP does) as if this is a substitute for properly structuring their thoughts - to me that's a cop-out and not far above no structure at all. Usually the results are then labelled top n x or n things you didn't know about x and contain more than n examples of x, without any attempt at an introduction or a conclusion. http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html