@Fro: That's pretty much been my experience with regenerating aspects.
I've yet to find a practical method of generating more research aspects. The only way I've been able to actually make a decent number of research points is through the deconstruction table, but that requires discovering cognito first, which was a major pain in the butt.
If you, like I, don't want to use a cheat sheet for performing your research, I suggest you just open up NEI and start scanning every vanilla item you can. Craft everything, explore to get the biome-specific stuff, backtrack to stuff you couldn't do after each new discovery. You should eventually get to cognito.
Once finding cognito, do research expertise and mastery, then the deconstruction table. After that, get ready to grind and sacrifice items like you've never ground before.
EDIT: Also, boring babysitting like mad. Thaumcraft 4 is a mod you 'play' while working on a project IRL.