I think transfer of mental models is often crucial for efficiently learning new procedural knowledge. Your skin oil problem is only a small example. Consider for example the task of adding up to numbers, the task of computer programming, or the task of designing a mechanical structure. Once you have been told about decimal places and carry, about memory and variables, about stress and strain and whatnot, reasoning about your problems suddenly becomes a whole lot easier and more successful.

Depending on the problem domain, supervised learning from an expert or the procedure in the post might be more appropriate.