Parallel thinking

I tend to think in pretty linear way, like to put things in order, line them up. The upside of that way of viewing problems is that you can often spot parallels or intersections--you can see where an order of events in one setting is similar to that in another. Or you can see where two lines of thinking intersect, where their common point is The downside, I would say, is that it is harder to see the branches, the points that move off the line in a curve. I think both ways of thinking lead to creative solutions. In one case, the linear case, you can take information from one problem and apply to another. In the branching case, you can move off the line in a new direction which may, or may not, intersect with another line.