[alwaysrunning]

"the unique experiences each person accumulates as their life unfolds. Good navigators, it appears, are mostly made, not born"

As the self proclaimed worst person in the world with directions, I can vouch for this. I was never taught how to find north, south, east, west as a kid, was never told to pay attention to landmarks on your way somewhere, never told to pay attention to street names, so on. And as a ultra runner my wife actually stopped coming to my races for a while bc you are expected to arrive at the next aid station around a certain time and if I wasn't familiar with the area I would get lost and she would worry that I was killed by a bear or smth. Since the advent of GPS on your wrist and such I don't get lost nearly as much. I honestly liked getting off course, being somewhere and seeing views most of all humanity would never see. But I still fail the test of 'point towards the lake' from sitting on my own couch. I can't quite make the connection in my mind, like driving I can't quite map out the entire route and often get streets confused.

[bongodongobob]

That's wild to me. I don't know how you wouldn't pay attention to those things. No one told me to pay attention to landmarks, I don't understand why you wouldn't. Very interesting.

[mewpmewp2]

I don't because it is hard to pay attention. I have always something else I am thinking about and it overrides ability to look at buildings or landmarks. I have to put in a lot of effort to intentionally look at buildings and memorise them. But also I wonder if somehow I care less about the buildings.

When I am travelling and visiting landmarks or sights it just seems like something I do because everyone does it and people reacting to it seems like they just do it to react. I guess they do feel something. But I don't see much difference compared to being myself there vs what I could also see in Google images. So it always feels to me as if people are hyping up the fact of themselves being there. I do enjoy the sun and hot climate though so I like travelling for those reasons.

Sure, I could go into thinking how awesome those landmarks are and the history, how they were built, but I feel like I have other things to think about as well.

[krisoft]

Btw landmarks in the navigational sense are not the same as landmarks in a tourist sense.

A tourist landmark would be “the grand canyon” or the “eifel-tower”. A navigational landmark is something like “a scrawny bush which seems to have grown leaning on that big rock with a flat top”, “the 3 story building where the middle level had a fresh coat of paint on the corner window frames”, or “corner of a park where 3 roads meet, and one of them has a deli with the picture of a prawn in the window”

[rossant]

Same here. I get lost all the time. I always forget to make attention to landmarks and surroundings.

[masklinn]

I also get lost all the time.

When I pay attention to landmarks they don’t “stick”, and neither does travel time. I’ll have vague recollections, but as often as not they’ll cause issues because I’ll vaguely recollect at the wrong location.

GPS has saved my bacon time and again.

[bongodongobob]

Not sure what you mean. I just mean "ok here's the McDonald's, the turn is coming up soon. Ok yup it's a right, there's the red building it's just past that."

[freitzkriesler2]

I was never told any of that either nor was I taught that in any capacity in school. However, the key difference ive noticed is being in the moment IE paying attention to your immediate environment and not getting lost in thought (or phone) that differentiates those who have an intuitive sense of direction versus those that don't.

With that said, I don't feel comfortable when I don't know which way is north so I always try and figure that out first.

[shitter]

I think this is it for me. Since I was a kid, I’ve always gotten lost in thought when walking around and don’t readily absorb my surroundings as a result. Even when I actively try to do so, it’s still hard to navigate because my brain isn’t well-trained to think that way.