Train Your Navigation Skills

Author Graham Lee thinks we should strive to reclaim ancient wayfaring abilities.

London cab drivers, to attain a license, must pass a test called “The Knowledge” that consists of memorizing 25,000 street names and locations. A 2011 study at University College London found that, in the process of doing so, the drivers’ hippocampi increased in size. The hippocampus is the area of the brain primarily associated with memory and spatial navigation. When this skill is no longer required, the same area shrinks.

This is fascinating because it shows that using our brains to navigate has a measurable physical effect on them. The gray matter volume literally increases and decreases, depending on how it’s used. This is relevant at a time when most people are relinquishing the ability to navigate on their own to technologies like GPS.

Since the UCL study came out, there is now more research confirming that use of GPS negatively impacts our spatial memory and even disables parts of the brain that would otherwise be used. In other words, when we stop navigating with our brains and outsource it to devices, we undermine a basic human skill and become less competent.

Finding Our Way

Navigation is the subject of the initial chapter in Human Being: Reclaim 12 Vital Skills We’re Losing to Technology, a 2023 book by British writer Graham Lee. The book offers a fascinating glimpse into how we used to function as human beings for centuries, if not millennia, and how rapidly those skills are disappearing in modern times.

Lee believes we should make a deliberate effort to relearn these skills because they make us capable and self-reliant. They are a testament to the truly impressive things that humans are capable of. It doesn’t mean we have to reject technology altogether, but when we become lazy and dependent on handheld devices, the Internet, algorithms, and AI to do our thinking for us, we become lesser versions of ourselves—and no one should settle for that.

I want to write about the 12 skills that Lee outlines in his book, but I’ll have to do them one by one, as each contains so much interesting, diverse material. I particularly loved the navigation chapter, which offered an in-depth description of ancient Polynesian seafaring techniques.

Perhaps because I grew up roaming the lakes and forests of Muskoka, Canada, I tend to think about navigation a fair bit. I would often head into the bush with a topographical map and compass in hand (no phone back then in the ‘90s; if I got lost, I was on my own). From a young age, I noticed geographical landmarks—a big odd-shaped rock, a crooked pine, a swamp in between two ridges, a steep decline, a memorable bend in the road—and I also felt attuned to the quality of the forest. I could sense immediately when the bush transformed from scruffy cedar brush to open hardwood stands; it gave me a distinct feeling and, still to this day, I can recall places based on that sensation.

Navigating the Barron Canyon, Algonquin Park, with paper maps and canoes

I thought everyone possessed this ability, until I met my husband and realized with a shock that not everyone has an internal compass! He has many skills, but navigation is not one of them. I attribute it to how differently we were raised—he did considerably less exploration growing up in suburban Toronto—and the research mentioned above would support this. Unless you grow up paying close attention to the world around you and noting how it changes, it passes in a blur.

A Tool Can Become a Crutch

GPS can be helpful in places where you’re totally clueless, don’t have access to other sources of information, or are in a hurry or a confusing traffic situation, but to rely on it daily to move through our lives is not wise.

Lee points out that digital maps themselves are oversimplified, dumbed-down versions of the rich sensory and cognitive maps humans instinctively make for themselves:

Route-finding apps deliberately display simple information to avoid any distraction or confusion: we swap the infinite detail of the world around us for cartoon buildings and generic swabs of green, the terrain condensed to shapes and lines.

The more we use GPS, the worse we get. A 2020 study from McGill University in Montreal found that reliance on GPS makes us less able to recall information about our surroundings and “damages our propensity to form accurate cognitive maps.”

We glide through the route, unaware of where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going. We are not forced to learn the “right” route because GPS simply adjusts the route for us; it instantly accommodates wrong turns, and so we never become better at navigating. And I would add, who’s to say that the most efficient route is always the best one? Some of my favourite drives are not the fastest, but rather the most beautiful, with places for my kids to stop and places to get great coffee and ice cream, where there are fewer cars, or the road itself is twisty and hilly and actually fun to drive.

Retrain Your Skills

Lee has valuable suggestions, which I like to think of as small acts of rebellion, wrangling the technology back into its role as a useful tool (at times), not a dominant force replacing us.

One-Leg Rule: When travelling somewhere new, allow yourself to use GPS only in one direction, to familiarize yourself with the route. Then force yourself to drive home without it. Lee says, “By doing so, you create a more urgent need to pay attention on the outbound leg of your trip, making a mental note of landmarks and street signs so you can find your way back.”

One-Trip Pony Rule: Don’t allow yourself to use GPS on any route you’ve ever driven before. Limit your GPS to showing you new routes, rather than functioning as an ongoing crutch.

Home Rule: Don’t use GPS when navigating in your local area. “Making unaided trips from home is a natural starting point, mirroring the way our forebears struck further out by keeping a connecting link back.” Doing this on foot is even better.

Use Printed Maps, Not Digital: I’ve written about this before: We Still Need Paper Maps. Printed maps provide a broader perspective and show where you are, or are going, in relation to many other points. In Lee’s words, “A map’s grid system forces you to take a wider view before you zoom into a specific location.”

Change How You Read Digital Maps: GPS usually defaults to an “egocentric” model, where your body or car are centered in the screen, always moving straight ahead. The world revolves around you. A better mode is “allocentric”, where you are forced to “translate the map to the direction your body is facing and as a result more properly understand its contents in relation to your own positioning.”

Sketch Your Route: When planning a trip to someplace new, Lee suggests studying the route on a map first, then sketching it on paper. Mark down any potential obstacles or important turns. Keep the paper in your pocket and only refer to it if necessary.

Practice Active Recall: For journeys you’d like to remember, take some time after to think consciously about them, testing yourself on street names, key turns, directions taken, and points of interest. This will help to solidify it in your memory. Get used to fixing north in your mind. If you need to use a device, try your phone’s compass instead of its Maps app.

Look at Maps: I like Lee’s suggestion of pinning a high-quality map of your local area to a wall in your house. Spend time looking at it. You’ll absorb information that can be a helpful future reference.

No Phones in the Car: My own suggestion is to make a “no phones in the car” rule when it comes to kids of all ages. Looking at handheld devices while on road trips impedes a kid’s ability to orient themselves geographically in the world and, as I’ve heard anecdotally from parents, it makes them worse drivers once they get their licenses, if they don’t know how to get from point A to point B on their own. Insist that they travel with their eyes looking up and out, taking in the world just as we humans have always done.

You’ll Also Enjoy:

• Wonder, an Antidote to Despair

• 100 Practical Life Skills That Every 18-Year-Old Should Have

• My Family’s Screen Time Rules

• The 15-Minute Block

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