There's a not-so-sacred ritual that I practice almost every time I drive somewhere. It happens before I put on my seat belt, look in my mirror and turn on the engine. I type the address of wherever I'm going into my phone. I have a terrible sense of direction, so without the seemingly omniscient guide of GPS – the Global Positioning System – I wouldn't be alone are lost, i feeling lost.
I'm wondering: is there anything I can do to improve my navigation skills? The answer is yes, say researchers who study this topic. Let go of your fear of getting lost, be observant, and practice maintaining “a sense of direction in your mind as you travel,” says Mary Hegarty, a cognitive psychologist at the Spatial Thinking Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “If you have GPS on, you probably don't think about that.”
Over-reliance on GPS can also lead to a more limited view of your surroundings, she says. “You don't pay attention to the broader environment that gives you clues” about where you are in space – what is to your right or left and what it means to be “here.”
In fact, people who have a good internal compass can have a deeper connection with the world around them, he says Hugo Spiers, professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. He studied the brains of London taxi driverswho are obliged to do so remember about 25,000 street names in town to get a job. And he found that once the taxi drivers mastered the names, “they had a real sense of ownership of the city” – and more power over their environment.
If you want to feel more confident on the road or rely less on GPS to get around, here are some steps you can take to improve your sense of direction.
Turn off your GPS and get lost on purpose
If you don't have time, turn off your GPS and try to find your way around the city, says Ben Gero, an outdoor recreation specialist with Cleveland Metroparks, a system of wildlife refuges in Ohio. He helps city children get used to the outdoors and learns skills such as navigation.
“The next time you go for a walk, take a road you haven't walked yet and see where it ends,” says Gero. Or take the scenic route “to your favorite bodega, bar or coffee shop.” This works when you walk, cycle or drive. Then see if you can get home from your destination without GPS.
The goal is to become comfortable with getting lost and traveling the world without a map, he says. “We've all gotten used to the idea of having to go, go, go to get to our place. What's the harm if it takes five to 10 minutes longer to get back on the highway?”
Use landmarks to orient yourself
Not sure whether you are north, south, east or west of home? The experts we spoke with suggest picking a few sights around the city to help you get your bearings.
The ideal landmark is large and far away, such as a large sign, a highway, a tall building or a bridge “so it can serve as a better landmark,” Hegarty says. She uses the mountains where she lives in Santa Barbara as her landmark. Wherever she is in the city, she knows the mountains are to the north.
Be curious about your surroundings
Whether you're going somewhere new or somewhere you've been many times before, it's helpful to turn around and see what the view looks like behind you. Looking at your surroundings from different perspectives can help you remember the details of your route, Hegarty says, and give you visual cues on “how to get back.”
Understand the layout of the city
When trying to figure out where you are in a new place, it helps to understand the basic layout of the street. Many cities are arranged in a grid pattern. For example, Washington DC is divided into four quadrants and has streets running in three directions: north-south, east-west, and diagonal.
Other cities have streets with special naming conventions. Gero says that in Ogden, Utah, where he used to live, the north-south streets are named after U.S. presidents and arranged in chronological order, starting from the center of town. “So instead of First Street, it's Washington,” he says. Even if you don't know your presidents by heart, you have a general idea of which way to go if, for example, you're near Van Buren and need to get to Washington.
Use memory tricks to remember where you are
People with a good sense of direction – like London taxi drivers – know their streets. While you may not have mastered 25,000 of them, you can try some expert navigation tactics. Commit street names, landmarks and routes to memory by “using stories and tricks to capture things,” says Hugo Spiers. This is especially useful when street names are abstract and do not follow a logical order.
The process of connecting a story or idea to a place is called building a cognitive map. It gives you “a sense of where things are and how they're connected,” Spiers says.
So if you're navigating your way without a map, look around and use stories and memory devices to remember the details of your surroundings. You might say, “I'm going to turn right on 12th Street, where I bought churros with my friend that one day, and then I'll go down P Street toward the park—that's P for park.”
Will these tricks turn you into an expert navigator able to find your way out of lost woods? Probably not. But you can use them to gain a better sense of ownership of your environment and reduce the fear of getting lost.
The digital story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We would love to hear from you. Leave a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.
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