Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?

[davehcker]

I am going to be 26 soon, but I am still very terrible at navigating to places. I often get lost, even in smaller cities (or even a train station!), and have to constantly look up on Google Maps (with GPS), ask people, miss connections, taken wrong connections, running around in circles trying to find my destination.

Has anyone here been like me and considerably improved their spatial awareness and navigational skill? How?

[xvello]

My partner has similar struggles and after several years together, I think it boils down to how we orient maps. They use Google Maps' default "map turns around you" mode while I always orient my maps with the North pointing up.

Spatial navigation boils down to learning to position and orient yourself relative to your surroundings. I feel like Google Maps' approach of having the map rotate around you is deeply counter-productive: it puts you at the center of the world instead of emphasizing your movement in the fixed world. It can also mislead you because the phone's virtual compass might be completely wrong and pointing you to the wrong direction.

I have had a small compass on my keychain for more than a decade. When I get off the subway or start a trip, my first task is to determine where the North is. If I don't know it already, I'll check my compass. When I plot a course from the subway station to my final destination, I'll use either a paper map or an app (maps.me, or gmaps) in fixed orientation mode, and determine:

- what direction the A->B vector is (East-Southeast for example), so that I can check it regularly with my compass while walking and detect when I veer off course and need to re-check the map

- landmarks (shops, monuments, boulevards) I should pass by during my trip. If I don't see them, I re-check my position

- turn-by-turn directions (third street on the right, then a left at the roundabout...), with regular direction checkpoint (I should be facing South on this street)

Written in long form, this looks like an arduous project, but I usually perform this in a few seconds, before my partner has finished doing the figure-eight compass calibration dance on their phone. Before I had a smartphone, I used to position myself only with street names and landmarks on a paper map, but I do rely a lot on the GPS position now. I just never trust it for orientation, because my whole system relies on me keeping track of it.

[ukoki]

> They use Google Maps' default "map turns around you" mode

Physical maps that do this are infuriating. For example the "you are here" maps on the street and the tube/subway exit maps inside stations in central London. So you get off the train and look at the station exit map with a goal of finding -- say -- the eastern-most exit if that is your direction of travel, but have to mentally rotate the map to according to the compass pointer first.

[jacobmischka]

In my experience, if you rely too much on GPS that tells you exactly where you are and where to go you'll have a much tougher time actually retaining that information. When I first moved to a larger city than I'd lived in my whole life I had to look up how to get anywhere, but after I forced myself to stop and take wrong turns and figure it out I had a much easier time remembering where I was and how to get places.

I also learned a lot about my city/neighborhoods by walking in them for pleasure. I feel like I know most streets in a 5 mile radius because I spent so much time in them casually walking without the stress of missing a deadline.

Like most things in life, it ultimately comes down to mindful practice in a non-stressful environment.

Train stations are a little different, because often they look the exact same and you have to rely on small things like signs and very slight differences to figure out where you are. They're tricky and I think just require repetition.

[throw827474737]

> In my experience, if you rely too much on GPS that tells you exactly where you are and where to go you'll have a much tougher time actually retaining that information.

I think that is not surprising and well explainable. Without looking at GPS and immediately know "ah straight and then left" you now need to switch on your brain: Where am I? Which direction (in terms of compass direction) do I need to go, how am I aligned currently, can I infer from some landmark, sun, prior orientation? And you realize your surrounding for the next time ("ah at that red house or that billboard or that strange looking thing I need to go right"). You even learn street names by noticing them more, and next time can remember when you hit that street at another intersection.. all contributing to build up your inner mental map and orientation... if you know an area well you can just walk unknown new paths, because you know where you should come out and hit known territory from another angle again.

Often I am lazy and use GPS, which is also fine and a nice tool to have for foreign environments.. still this memory&learning effect is soo much compromised, so often when getting there a 2nd time I wonder: Have I been really here already? lol, so definitely sharing and seconding that experience!!

Btw, trying to retrace an unknown path you just travelled on some map only afterwards at home is also superhelpful reinforcement learning!

2nd btw what one said: > They use Google Maps' default "map turns around you" mode while I always orient my maps with the North pointing up.

Yes very much... kills any "need to orient" brainwork completely.. if you must maps, keep them north-oriented!! Definitely too.

[thr0w4w4y4g00d]

There is a thing called Topographical Disorientation [0].

Totally not saying you have it.

Could it be on the autism spectrum? I do not know.

I have always been very bad at navigating. Remembering a location takes others 1-3 visits, where it takes me 8-12. I have actually counted.

I am extremely bad at navigating to places and even at remembering the directions to previously visited locations.

I do not have ADHD, I can focus for long. I have always been seen as very smart. Good academic results, good pay, good at solving problems, working on the edge of things. Good at math, programming, writing, performing arts, and socialization.

I am saying these because I do not know if I have any deficits. But I always am bad at navigating.

There is one other things I am (very) bad at that other smart people are good at: chess. I have tried loosely, but any non-player 12 yo can beat me after playing chess for three months.

I am good at everything a smart person can be good at. Not at chess. I totally suck. I can learn new things bery quickly. Yet, chess and navigating beat my ass to a pulp.

I might have Asperger's, although never diagnosed. I have high empathy on the parallel.

I personally think these all are somehow related.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographical_disorientation

[davehcker]

OP here. No matter how hard I try, I just can't get it until I make frequent visits from 'different sides' to a location. I didn't even know about Topographical Disorientation, but it really hits home. Anecdotally speaking, I always apologize to people around me saying that, "I think I don't have the location module in my brain".

[thr0w4w4y4g00d]

Yes. Same goes with me.

My partner and parents know that I have this. I don't tell it to others.

I also go to the same location through many roads, but only once I have one etched into my mind.

I have to use G-Maps 7-8 times for visiting the same location if there are even days-wide gaps.

I am also bad at getting directions in maps. I have to orient and reorient one multiple times to figure out where I am, which way I am looking, amd which way I need to go.

I often just walk 10-20 meters to figure out which way I am looking or need to go.

Yeah, I am missing the "location module", too.

I have had this long before I had access to any sort of digital maps or GPS.

And, for me, Google Maps has been a lifesaver.

If I go with the help of it 8-10 times, I never ever forget the road again.

This is so weird for me given I have so good memory since my childhood. I could always memorize things real fast, without any superficial tools like mnemonics, flash cards, etc.

[turtleyacht]

Thank-you, throwaway account and OP. It looks like "8" is a magic number--I tell others it takes me that many times of repeating to get around without GPS.

It's inconvenient for some things, like carpooling, and it can annoy close others to "never remember." Even if I try to focus on getting somewhere, attention never lasts for long.

I've tried heuristics and patterns, like "if I exited the highway and turned left, I need to turn right and merge to return home." But none seems to stick. I forget if I needed to turn left or right out of the retail place!

And this is a long way of saying I had to quit games like CounterStrike because of it, unable to really keep up with siblings and so on, so a part of my identity is wrapped up in this disorientation mode. I ask them how they "avoid getting lost," and to them it's second nature. They were already experts in it.

Maybe there is a better algorithm to orient oneself, something like when we need to print and "see all the env vars," to make it _so concrete_ (like Dr. Ng likes to say), that _now_ we can get to the heart of the problem we were working on.

[thr0w4w4y4g00d]

Damn, I forgot about games, too.

I play only occasionally, and never the competitive sorts. I play CoD, Factorio, Age of Empires, etc. Played some Vice City, GTA-V back in the day.

In VC, GTA-V, I could never remember even the most common roads.

I always found myself looking at the map at the corner much more than the main screen when I needed to get anywhere.

If I played the competitive sorts, maybe I would discovered that I suck at those, too.

But when navigating IRL, I am a responsible driver, an alert "walker". Yet I never comprehend directions.

In the city, I always end up using the longer route than the shorter one, through more common and active places, because I know them more. I end up using the longer route most of the time. I have some "anchor points" in the city, and I always navigate through them, because I know those routes more. I don't risk other routes.

Today, I could not even recognize the route I just went through- when making the return trip (two hours stay). I had to ask around for directions. (Not my city)

Yet, besides this, my life is totally normal. Weird.

[turtleyacht]

I think there was a HN post about a language of hunters. The writer learned to speak it, and because it embedded orientation they did not get lost.

It would be interesting to train our brains through some kind of mapping like that.

[mrcartmeneses]

As one of those people who is like a walking GPS (I can take you somewhere if I’ve only been there once, or I can take you to a place if I know where it is, where I am but not what’s in-between, I have a 3d map in my head and can walk a route in my mind or visualise a place and its details) I’d like to offer the following advice...

Maybe you can learn to be good at navigating. I did it by just walking round London as a kid in an age without smartphones and without parents inclined to drive me places. Public transport in my area of London was also poor and I was a teenager with no money. I also grew up navigating for my parents on road trips.

However, from what I understand, spatial memory and spatial reasoning are somewhat innate. It’s perfectly possible that you just have very poor spatial memory and poor spatial reasoning and trying to change that could be fruitless.

Test my theory by looking at something across the room from you. Would you feel OK with trying to go and pick it up without opening your eyes?

[bergenty]

I don’t think the room analogy works. I can easily find my way to something in the dark and place rooms in a house in my head but I’ve never been able to visualize anything city or town scale spatially.

[codingdave]

Stop using GPS, as others have said. It isn't that GPS isn't useful - but you need to use it just for research, and then put the burden on yourself to memorize and remember what GPS tells you.

I'm old enough to have learned my way around before GPS. I would study maps of the area where I live, and I would explore - walking, biking, and driving every road in my area. These days, I still study maps online and also look at satellite imagery. When I am going somewhere new, I use Google Maps to recommend routes, memorize them, study them and what I will pass by, and then attempt to follow that route from memory. GPS is always there as a backup if you need it, and the little wrong turns and getting lost that happens without it tends to show you even more of your area. Eventually, you just know where everything is, at least everything within a few dozen miles of your home.

[timonoko]

Some of us have "too good" navigational skills. When bicycling Australia I started to bike "West" from Brisbane airport and was very confused when I ended by the ocean. I had to think very hard wherefom the sun shines and what the compass says.

Happened thereafter several times, my amazing internal compass was obviously totally based on visual cues like on which side the moss grows and other such shit.

[mikewarot]

I've you're a parent, and notice this in your child, like I did a few years ago, there's a simple game to play with them, when you're out and about.

Stop at random times... and ask.... which way is our house? Or... let them decide to go left/right/straight at the next turn.... eventually they'll start to catch on. 8)

For the original poster - I'd suggest giving yourself 5 minutes before turning to google maps, to try to figure out where you are.

You should turn off "auto-rotate" and always have North as Up.

Also, you could just use google maps with location turned OFF, as a big zoomable paper map replacement.

[dusted]

Everyone starts out like that, the reason some become better is because they learn to do it, by not using GPS all the time.

For me it was easy, I'm old enough that the first many years of driving a car, I didn't have a GPS device.. The first years, I used old fashioned paper maps, the kind you could buy in every gas station, when visiting a new place.

There simply was no other way.. You'd study the map to find the destination first, then plan a route, then study the route "okay, this route until a street with that name, down that street until the very end, then left" this sort of thing..

Limit your options, when your plans depend on it, you'll learn.

Be more like a child, remember when you were learning to read? How you'd try to read all text you came across? Do that with cardinal points, when you're in any place, look at the map (oriented so North is up), look around, usually you'll find a street name and a crossing or something to help you identify your point on the map..

Yes, maps are central to learning to navigate, they're an abstraction that you can learn to build internally.

Even computer games will help, just the other day, I played "dayz" for the first time, and found a map, and my real-world mapreading skills were immediately applicable. It could also be a game like minecraft, something with large environments, where you'll need some sense of direction to do anything useful.

[Comevius]

This is like when watching movies in a language you are trying to learn. The English subtitle won't help you learn, you only learn to use it as a crutch. You have to use the native subtitle and a dictionary, that way your brain is motivated to learn in order to be able to enjoy the movie.

Brains love crutches.

This is also like learning a new keyboard layout. You have to just start using it however painfully slowly, but it's precisely that inconvenience that motivates your brain to get it before long.

[turbojerry]

Try navigating using the ATAK app, it can pull in maps and topology-

https://wiki.civtak.org/index.php?title=Getting_Started#Over...

Overview This is a tutorial to help you go from "Zero to Hero" (or perhaps zero to competent user?) on ATAK-Civ. ATAK is a very powerful, enterprise-quality collaborative geospatial situational awareness (SA) tool. That is, it helps you get around like any mapping tool (e.g. Google Maps), but it has a tremendous amount of additional functionality and it is very extensible, though most of the plugins developed either at Government expense or for Government use, are not released to the public. ATAK is much more powerful and easier to use when used in conjunction with a server. See Server options below.

Time Expectation If you have a device configured with ATAK already, it takes about fifteen minutes to get the basics squared away. If you are coming into this fresh, it may take you a couple hours to configure a device and learn your way around.

[Saris]

What's the advantage of ATAK over something like Locus Maps?

[lifeplusplus]

If you are in NYC, it's easy due city being a grid system, you just have to remember which way is north/up and then you can figure out. Ie. I know after I get out of subway (a train station) I'd to go "up", up as in the default orientation in google maps which I think is north. Then I'd know that if I'm going the correct way. I'd encounter x street, and if wrong way then I'd encounter y street. So I get out, make a best guess and start walking. If the next street is what I should have gotten to, great! If not, I turn back. Also I use landmarks, lets I'm completely lost, I look for something big like a bridge, tall known buildings, ocean, or even the sun (very rarely), which helps me orient... If it's there and I see it from here then I must be at xyz.

Honestly playing videos games helped me develop these skills as a kid. MMORPG and massive FPS shooter games where you literally had to use in game compass to find the other person.

[piceas]

Join an orienteering club?

Start simple. What will guide you in the right direction. The path, street, river, giant arrows, etc.

What will you see if you are heading the right direction /almost there. The third street on the left, a pub, park etc.

What will catch you if you go too far. A big intersection, a prominent building, water, etc.

[SpikeDad]

I've never been able to navigate. Makes Geocaching very unpleasant. Until GPS came along I made sure to only drive with people who could navigate. However with quality GPS I never fret traveling for a second (well at least driving in the US). I've just accepted that I need it like I need contacts to see clearly.

I think you'll be happier accepting and using tools to navigate rather than feeling badly about your shortcoming.

I'm sure you excel in other areas of life.

[sprkwd]

Stop using gps. I found that if I relied on that I forgot how to navigate.

Use an analogue map before you leave and write to route out like a list. With landmarks. Then with practice it’ll come.

[thr0w4w4y4g00d]

Not OP, but I have faced this same problem since long before GPS became ubiquitous and I had access to it in any form.

[kfajdsl]

The first time you go somewhere, you can use GPS. After that, try to remember the route. If you get lost, it's fine if you open up maps, but you should try. Eventually, you should just be able to glance at directions at the beginning and be like "oh, I need to take X and Y roads" and know where you're going.

It also helped me to set my maps to have North pointing up vs my heading pointing up.

[rhn_mk1]

Try using a paper map, no GPS. It forces you to pay attention to the surroundings, and to turn that into spatial awareness.

If your problem is only that your spatial awareness was never exercised enough, you should quickly get better.

You'll quickly get tired of checking your map for the route every 10 steps, which will force you to choose easier routes, and to memorize them better, improving your navigation too.

[Hatrix]

In cities, I look for major landmarks visible from long distances- tall buildings, bridges, bodies of water and their relative positions to each other and where I want to go.

Some cities have patterns in the street names you can use to tell what direction you are going. Position of the sun and time of day can tell you your direction.

Navigating a new city at night without checking maps still trips me up sometimes.

[2143]

The first few times use Google Maps. Then stop using it.

Also, in some cases the shortest route may not be the one easiest to remember. In the beginning stick with the one easiest to remember.

I used to live in a university town, and while I knew the way to the buildings relevant to me, it took me 6 months to realize the shortcuts.

Maybe try random walks during your free time?

[tbensky]

In the book "The lost art of finding our way" the author claims a big boost to not getting lost is to (simply) pay more attention to an outing as it evolves. It is indeed difficult to suddenly, half way through a trip (to a dense city, hiking trail, or whatever) answer the question "where am I?"

[brudgers]

A compass.

Such as a small Silva Lanyard.

Not the app on your phone because then you will be distracted by Hacker News.

Good luck.

[enviclash]

Posting in the wall of my bedroom the 6 mapsheets in scale 1:50.000 around my place changed my spatial abilities for the best. I surely recommended it.

[rgrieselhuber]

Taking a land navigation course can do wonders.

[cvccvroomvroom]

Leave your phone at home and go bicycling.

Worst case, you can ask someone for directions because everyone else will have a maps app.

[gidorah]

Yeah, take the time to get lost, self-powered in your locality. You can then try and find where you are on a map. Staying local means it is easy to get back home.