>Questioning things was not something I was taught and I grew up to always follow the "rules".

>And I think that has (kind of) led to my current state where without rules I struggle to make decisions.

I worry that the newer generations brought up in zero tolerance environments will come late to questioning authority, if ever. Life is far more nuanced and negotiable than school and zero tolerance leads people to believe and folks like yourself who aren't equipped to think creatively in these situations have been robbed of a valuable skill.

I think this is almost universally true. When the next step isn’t obvious because there are too many different strands of the project to integrate, progress grinds to a halt. Same underlying phenomenon of what novelists call “writer’s block.”