Is your problem with diagram, similar, or improvising? I can understand a problem with improvising, in that I should have been more specific. Specifically, every improvising musician working in the area of any type of jazz that involves playing over chord changes. The diagram discussed here is really very fundamental, open and "big picture". Certainly, musicians have their own "circle of" diagrams in their heads if they ever plan on doing ii-v-1s etc. If they are playing anything resembling chord changes, it would be hard to avoid thinking in patterns of chord progressions, unless the person was aiming to subvert that system (certainly an acceptable strategy) and create their own tonal/chordal language while other band members do changes. Many avant-garde players do that, and then many don't bother with chord changes at all. But when one is expected to produce a bass line or a harmonic line, one does need some kind of a diagram that (because of the nature of the harmonic system itself) will be very very similar to this one. I'm a professional jazz musician. I play traditional and experimental jazz, and I seriously have yet to meet a single colleague who doesn't have their own circular or loop-like diagram that looks a heck of a lot like this one. But I'm open to hearing about a new way of thinking-- perhaps you could tell me about that, and I could share ti with my colleagues. We all do tend to get trapped in our own ways.