That's a great description. Unfortunately, I fear perhaps it's possible everyone does those things, you just happened to be able to recognise them, which on the plus side speaks well for your rationality and effectiveness but on the minus side is pessimistic as to your improvement.

However, that's probably annoying to hear rather than helpful, so I will try to come back and see if I have any positive suggestions how you (or I) might be able to improve on them...

I don't know; I'm reasonably sure there will be people who have the inverse property to some of these things. I know there are people who are talented at keeping track of lots of things and not dropping any on the floor and it's not at all implausible that such people might be better at that than at solving complicated individual problems. I know there are people who are very good at using existing stuff but can't create anything new to save their life. And I'm pretty sure I've encountered people who have boundless imagination but no judgment, so they're forever coming up with off-the-wall ideas but can't distinguish the good ones from the bad.

I could believe that compartmentalisation was a universal human cognitive bug, but I think most of the rest are things where it's possible to go too far the other way. (Of course it may well be that there is no actual happy medium between the two...)

"sometimes those compartments don't link up and talk to each other when they really ought to"

I don't think this is a universal bug. I suspect it of being a development/aquired skill issue. Sion and I run into this discussion a lot. Last night we were talking about the way each of our memories work so differently - and exactly HOW different we were to each other. Memory and compartmentalisation must be interelated very strongly. Exactly how must be where the action is.

It may be too easy to say that the way your mind works gives your brilliance you have in your fields of expertise and the way my mind works gives me solid capability in others, but I don't doubt that it's true.

For me, the way I break out of being unable to think laterally when it is critical that I must do (it's my job) is to hold the problem in my mind while exposing myself to a completely different environment. This can be as bizzare as walking round a garden centre while trying to work on a fundraising concept or flipping through a massive office supplies catalogue while thinking about trying to sell mortgages for building societies. You put these two seemingly random things together and suddenly become aware of connections that you didn't think of.

So I would say that as a person I have developed my lateral thinking over many years and am now quite good at it.

However - when I consider what people like you and Sion do for a living, the very idea gives me a headache. I guess that might also be because I haven't spent years training my brain to do it. But I suspect that we all need to have a small natural inclination and interest to develop skills to the point of excellence.

"very idea gives me a headache"

For ages I've been meaning to write a more general discussion of the mental process involved in programming, with regard to the whole issue of many applicants being unable to write programs at interview. But my brain is fried now because I've spent two days tracing backwards in unfamiliar code in search of inconsistencies.

Good point. With some things it's probably possible to have BOTH flaws, but many will be one way or the other, and hopefully possible to improve.