You guys are way beyond my level. I'm a big fan of "just running" which is to say running without worrying too much about every little detail unless there is discomfort or pain. I kinda like to think the same thing about "just lifting", though I can understand the dedication to efficiency.
Yah, for years I followed a 'just lift' approach, although lifting will always involve more conceptualization than running because you have to decide what exercises to do, how often to do them, with which other exercises to do them, at what weight, and for more or less how many reps and sets. A lot of this can be done by feel, and until very recently, that's how I did it.
But you get to a certain plateau, or you experience certain problems, like you say, or maybe you read or talk to someone and you find out there might be a better way, and it gets you thinking. That's what's happened to me through my participation in Abide's thread. I read around a bit, found out everyone insists squats are the kind of lifts, even though I always hated them, and so took them more seriously, and yes, I agree now, squats are essential. Also, through reading, I've been exposed to the underlying physiology and logic of lifting, and it showed me that it makes the most sense to just do the big, heavy lifts for the most part.
For the last few months I've been making really good gains on a fairly consistent basis.
As for the 1RMs and rep-counts we've been discussing, the main reason for me to think about implementing more discipline with a stricter logic is that I never seem to be able to get in all that I think is essential to a good, general st regimen. I've also become convinced that a variety of rep-counts will probably get the best results. Hopefully, after another few weeks I'll have a pretty good routine established again and can go back to fairly mindless workouts. In fact, it my be even more relaxing and mindless than before because the whole workout--sets and reps and exercise order--will be laid out for me, allowing me to daydream about other things.
I also have a fetish for technical jargon, so it's been fun learning from Abide and his links and learning the lifter's shorthand.
But in any case, I agree that everyone has to find an MO that keeps them coming back for more. With running, a 'just run' approach seems to work best for me, but it was fun messing with Garmins and a stricter weekly running routine for a while. I even tried cadence-counting, but that only lasted a few blocks.