Consider how a metal like steel is made: by processing iron. And how is iron acquired? by mining iron ore and processing that. The general process is this:
- we start with some pile of raw material;
- some of that is stuff we want, some is not;
- but if we have no raw material, we have nothing to work with.
The idea of refining is that we want to take that raw material and move it a few steps on the way to our desired end-result. This process doesn't happen on its own: we have to train ourselves to turn raw material into more refined material, so that later on we can take that refined material and turn it into an end-product.
Much of my thinking on the pedagogy and workflow of music production is to look at production as a process of refining raw material into tracks, and the process of learning as something similar: the end-result of learning is a set of trained skills we can apply in production; the end-result of refining our workflow is a more efficient workflow. By focusing our attention explicitly on the learning process and the workflow, we better equip ourselves later on with better drilled mental techniques and a more efficient and reliably workflow.
One other feature of the refining process is that progress made at one step provides raw materials for a refining process further down the line. In the short term, one may focus on one step as the end-in-itself, but when it is suitably practised, one moves on and makes use of what has been trained. If you don't know chords or scales, then at first (as any beginning piano student will know), it is important to drill scales, arpeggios and chords until they're second nature; once they're second nature, one can then readily apply them in the study of music in general.
When it comes to being in the creative flow, the slightest disruption can throw us out of it. My own creative flow is very fragile, easily disrupted, and I'm not productive. Thus it is very important for me to develop a paradigm such as 'mining and refining' (and the other aspects of philosophy of learning and production that I describe here).
I write on a separate wiki about my Mental Health issues and these two are very intertwined, both in terms of how having a brain burned out through mania, and treated with medication, makes it harder to make myself do things, and makes things like discipline and motivation harder to come by and more fragile, and also the degree to which music has therapeutic value in so many ways. Music rewards the struggle.