Is insight meditation counter-productive (sometimes)?

This question was prompted by https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/q/9488/254 --- On page 31 of [Good Questions, Good Answers](http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/gqga-5ed.pdf) it says, > **Explain what insight meditation is** > > During insight meditation a person just tries to be aware of whatever happens to them without thinking about it or reacting to it. > > **What is the purpose of that** > > Usually we react to our experience by liking or disliking it or by letting it trigger thoughts, daydreams or memories. All these reactions distort or obscure our experience so that we fail to understand it properly. By developing a non-reactive awareness we begin to see why we think, speak and act the way we do. Is "without thinking about or reacting to" experience, deliberately counter-productive? Is it counter-productive, in scenarios when you should be trying to: - Learn something new (learning something is presumably trying to allow yourself to be affected, to "produce" a change in the knowledge you have)? - Create something new (e.g. if you're making or writing something for your work/livelihood)? Wouldn't it be better to be absorbed in or by the experience, to absorb the experience, in these scenarios? I fear it's counter-productive: - Because it's intended to be (counter-productive) - Because it's an addition (of some kind of awareness to the mind-state) and therefore a distraction - Because having reaction (i.e. effect on your own knowledge) is the purpose or goal when learning - Because having reaction (e.g. thoughts like "this is good or not good") are the tool when creating