It can be compared to storyboarding in film, when a concept, a character, or an event, can be described (even roughly) then that resulting tile can be posted as a placeholder on a plot timeline/outline.
Eventually, the various tiles can be hooked together with what is needed between them to finish the linearity of the story, polished, chucked away out of hand, filed away for a sequel, whatever.
They can be of any size, so a creative linear stream that might flow from time to time can be a great big tile, and a quick descriptor of an event to be fleshed out later can be a small and equally important one.
So, to answer the question, jumping around a bit is normal (even encouraged) just as linear flow might be normal when it does indeed flow. Should you run into a dead end in a linear flow, you can hop to something totally different and not get writers' block because you are stuck. Just go write a different tile for a different part of the plotline. Often, the block will solve itself in your brain while you're doing some other tile, just because there is no pressure to solve it.
It's very useful, and neatly takes the pressure off the creative process that conventional linear writing can often impose.
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