0:02

You're listening to Life Kit from

0:06

NPR. Hey, what's

0:08

up everyone? Andrew Limbong here in for Mario

0:10

Sagara. The other day I had to

0:12

run an errand. It

0:15

wasn't crazy far from where I live in Baltimore.

0:17

It was just in a part of town I

0:19

don't go to all that often. So I hopped

0:21

into the car and performed that ritual I imagine

0:23

a lot of us do. Before

0:25

the seatbelts, before checking the mirrors, before even

0:27

turning the car on. Alright, where am I

0:30

going? Where is this place? I plugged the

0:32

address into my phone. One, oh

0:34

two, one, Delaney Valley Road. Put it

0:36

on the little holder thingy on the dash,

0:38

and then, and only then, off

0:40

I went. It's

0:44

a little ridiculous if you think about it. I

0:46

was headed to a local college campus. It's not

0:48

out of the way on some hidden backstreet, it's

0:51

on a main strip. And there are a bunch

0:53

of signs around it being like, the college campus

0:55

is this way. And yet, though

0:57

I would have loved to have spent

0:59

this beautiful spring drive with the windows

1:02

down bumping vampire weekend uninterrupted in the

1:04

whip, because I don't have a

1:06

great sense of direction, I was at the mercy

1:08

of Google Maps. Because

1:13

without it, not only would I

1:15

be lost, I'd also feel lost. And

1:17

I know I'm not the only one. One of

1:20

the things we measure in our lab is whether

1:22

people feel anxious if they suddenly find themselves lost

1:24

or realize they've lost track of where they are.

1:27

That's Mary Hagerty, a cognitive psychologist at

1:29

the University of California, Santa Barbara. She

1:31

leads the Spatial Thinking Lab there, where

1:33

they study how we see and interpret

1:35

ourselves and other objects in space. And

1:38

one of the things they study there is this

1:40

thing called spatial anxiety. We just ask you about

1:43

scenarios, you know, imagine, you know, you have to

1:45

navigate to a part of town you've never been

1:47

before. Do you feel anxious about that? Or maybe

1:49

you suddenly find, you

1:51

know, you don't, you're not where you thought

1:53

you were, you know, does that make you

1:56

feel anxious? You know, so absolutely. And so

1:58

and again, good news is. Because there

2:00

are steps we can take to help alleviate

2:02

spatial anxiety and get a better sense of

2:04

the world around us. Today on

2:07

LifeKit, boosting your sense of direction.

2:09

You know, if I ever find my way back home. That's

2:19

ahead. There

2:24

are two questions I want to head off

2:27

before we get started. The first is why

2:29

bother? For those of us not navigationally blessed,

2:31

does Google Maps get me to where I

2:33

need to go? Yes.

2:36

Do I usually have my phone on me at all times? Sure,

2:38

usually. I threw this question

2:41

at Ben Giro. He's an outdoors recreation

2:43

specialist with Cleveland Metro Parks where he

2:45

helps kids from the city get used

2:47

to the outdoors, which includes teaching them

2:49

how to navigate. So obviously

2:51

he gets this question a lot. Well,

2:53

I mean, I just quite

2:57

deadpan just say like, well, has

2:59

your phone ever died, especially when you're

3:02

outside? And if so, like,

3:04

how do you get going? Do you just kind of guess and

3:06

do you just sit

3:08

down and cry? I don't know. Hugo

3:11

Spears is a professor of cognitive

3:14

neuroscience at University College London, and

3:16

his expertise is in spatial navigation.

3:19

And he says that having a good

3:21

sense of direction gives you more

3:23

than the ability to just go from here

3:26

to there. My advice would be, yeah,

3:29

don't stress yourself out, you know, trying to

3:31

push yourself to navigate, but it's kind of

3:33

trying to try and find the fun in

3:35

it of the power you have over the

3:37

environment. Hugo's research includes looking

3:39

at the brains of the people who drive

3:41

the black taxis in London. Those

3:44

are the people who have to take that pretty

3:46

rigorous test covering about 25,000 street

3:49

names in London. The thing I discovered London

3:51

taxi drivers once they've mastered these street names,

3:53

they have some sort of real

3:55

sense of ownership of the city. So I think there's

3:57

a lot of value in how we connect to the

3:59

environment. that goes beyond just tapping into

4:02

digital maps. Okay, so that

4:04

answers the first question of why. Now,

4:06

what about who? Mary Hagerty

4:08

from the Spatial Thinking Lab says, there

4:10

is some separation between people who

4:13

are good at navigation and

4:15

those of us who are bad at it. I

4:17

would say it comes from two things. I

4:19

think probably a certain amount of it is

4:21

inherited, but I think it largely comes from

4:24

the types of navigation experiences you've had in

4:26

your life, how much you

4:28

have actually been challenged in

4:31

navigation and how much you've challenged

4:33

yourself. And there is that old

4:35

canard about how men have a better sense of

4:37

direction than women, which there

4:39

may be some differences in how

4:42

men and women navigate, but the

4:44

underlying reasoning is cultural, says Hugo,

4:46

because in countries with higher gender

4:49

equality, there is little gender difference

4:51

in navigational skill. So there

4:53

are countries like much of the

4:55

Scandinavian countries where there is no real difference between

4:58

men and women. It's very small. And

5:00

in school, they learn how to navigate, whereas

5:02

in various countries around the world,

5:04

where there are big gender discrepancies

5:06

between what women and men can

5:08

access for education, healthcare, travel, you

5:11

see big differences in navigation skill. And

5:14

yes, there is still a lot we don't know

5:16

about why some people are better at it than

5:18

others. Like Mary said before, there's some people who

5:20

just got it like that. But

5:22

if that's not you, there are some things

5:25

you can practice that'll teach you about your

5:27

own neighborhood or that you can even apply

5:29

if you're visiting somewhere. Here's Mary again. I

5:32

think of navigation as sort of a use it or

5:34

lose it skill. You know, if you use it, you

5:36

get better at it. So that's where I would start.

5:40

Okay, so let's start. Take away

5:42

one, get lost on purpose. Here's outdoor

5:44

specialist Ben Giro. I would recommend that

5:46

if you're not in a time crunch,

5:50

try, just try taking a different turn

5:52

and seeing where it ends up. And

5:54

yeah, while Ben's expertise is out there

5:56

in the woods, he says in the

5:58

context of a... urban area to

6:01

get a better sense of direction it

6:03

can be helpful to act like you're on a

6:05

leisurely hike. Next time you decide to

6:07

go on a walk or go for a stroll,

6:10

go down a road you've maybe

6:12

not walked to and see where it

6:14

ends up. Maybe walk the scenic way

6:17

to your favorite bodega or your bar

6:19

or wear out coffee shop or whatever.

6:22

This is not the most efficient way to get

6:24

from point A to point B but

6:26

that's sort of the point. I think we've all

6:29

gotten used to the idea of that

6:31

like we've got to go go go get to our

6:33

spot we don't want to waste time. That

6:36

like old adage of time is

6:38

money you know. When

6:42

in some circumstances I can understand

6:44

the need or the compulsion to

6:46

try to get there as efficiently

6:48

as possible. But I'm

6:50

not an Uber Eats driver so

6:53

no one's waiting on my getting

6:55

to a destination before their ice

6:57

cream melts or their tacos

6:59

get cold. The philosophy still stands

7:01

even if you're driving from the highway to

7:03

the burbs and back. What's the

7:06

harm in taking five minutes to

7:08

ten minutes longer to get back

7:10

to the highway when

7:12

you're going home from your friends or

7:14

family's place? Probably nothing.

7:17

So instead of

7:19

putting on a GPS to get back to the highway, a

7:22

little bit of adventure, a little bit of exploration

7:25

and just try to get

7:27

from the burbs back to the highway. Well

7:31

let me ask you the opposite is what is the benefit

7:33

of taking the time to do that? Well

7:35

so you're never just going to

7:38

magically acquire skill. So in order

7:40

to learn a skill you have to work

7:42

at it. You have to practice it. You

7:44

have to think about you

7:47

know the senses of directions and turning right

7:49

and left and kind of keeping a sense

7:53

of a direction in your head as you travel.

7:55

When you have a GPS on you're probably

7:57

not thinking about any of that. Just

8:00

a quick note, we're not trying

8:02

to make anti-GPS propaganda here. They

8:04

can be a great tool. Mary

8:06

says the most common use of

8:09

GPS that people self-report isn't for

8:11

turn-by-turn directions, it's to get accurate

8:13

up-to-date traffic information. But

8:15

she says an over-reliance on GPS

8:17

can lead to literally a more

8:19

narrow view of the world. If

8:22

you're just looking at your GPS, you're not

8:24

paying attention to the broader environment that maybe

8:27

gives you cues of, okay, when

8:30

this is on my right, it means I'm here, and when this is

8:32

on my left, it means I'm here. That is one of

8:34

the big pieces of advice I would give to people is

8:37

try navigating without it, especially

8:39

for routes that you take pretty

8:42

frequently, and pay

8:44

attention to the cues in the environment that

8:46

help you stay oriented on those routes. Which

8:50

brings us to takeaway two, pick out a few

8:52

big landmarks that you can use to orient yourself.

8:55

These landmarks can come in different genres.

8:57

Sure, you can use the fourth wave

8:59

coffee shop down the block or the

9:01

gas station with the good snacks as

9:04

street-level landmarks, but the most helpful are

9:06

the massive far-away ones. The

9:09

most useful landmarks are distal landmarks, landmarks that are

9:11

far away, right? Because, like, say something like the

9:13

bank on the corner, that might be a landmark

9:15

that helps you turn right. If you, you know,

9:18

you have to turn right on the bank to

9:20

go to a certain place, but, you know, you're

9:22

coming up to the bank, it's on your right,

9:24

and then after you've turned, it's behind you, you

9:26

know, so it's a relation to you changes as

9:29

you navigate. But something that's in

9:31

the distance, like for us

9:33

in the mountains, you know, it's something

9:35

that's always far away, so it's a

9:37

better cue to orientation. And

9:40

Ben says this is something humans have been

9:42

doing for centuries, you know, picking a thing

9:44

and having that be the so-called true direction

9:46

for you. I know the more flat

9:48

it is, the harder it is. But growing

9:50

up in Cleveland area, we

9:52

have Lake Erie is always north. So I like

9:55

to say just try and find one thing to

9:57

be your true direction. It can

9:59

be a tall building. or a big sign, but

10:01

can also be a major highway. If

10:28

you do end up lost, these landmarks can help

10:30

guide you, if not where you need to

10:33

be, somewhere more familiar to you. It

10:35

helps if the landmarks are distinct, it also helps

10:37

if you've got a personal relationship to them. Here's

10:40

how you go. There are certain chemicals running

10:42

through a new, like, natural endogenous chemicals in

10:44

your brain that kind of lock in memory,

10:46

so things like dopamine is this

10:48

well-known molecule we get when we get rewarded by

10:50

something. So if you're in an experience like that

10:53

where, wow, lots of great things

10:55

around you, things have happened and you've got this

10:57

really positive memory, then

11:00

your brain has got more flexibility to hold

11:02

on to some of those memories. This is

11:04

the way that the research suggests. And

11:07

this is something we can take advantage of. Takeaway

11:09

3, turn your environment into a narrative

11:11

that you can understand. That is indeed

11:14

what a lot of expert navigators do,

11:16

is use narratives to help

11:18

lock things in because, like I

11:20

said earlier, it's great if you can memorize street

11:23

names, but street names are often, like, completely abstract.

11:25

So the tricks people use are to turn

11:27

these street names into stories and

11:30

use whatever tricks, you know, personal stories you

11:32

can make up. It's one thing to say,

11:34

oh, that's 12th Street. It's another thing to

11:36

say, oh, that's 12th Street, where my buddy

11:39

and I walked up to get those churros

11:41

that one day. Key to good memory is

11:43

often, like, how deep you're able to get

11:45

that information in. So are you

11:47

just, like, glancing at a street or are you

11:49

looking at it thinking, that doesn't make sense. Why

11:52

is that here? What's going on? Oh,

11:54

there's something happening. Focus on the detail and things

11:57

and think about it more deeply, the more like you're out of

11:59

form and memory of it. it at last. To

12:01

go back to an earlier example, when

12:03

Ben mentioned 295, the route that connects

12:05

Baltimore into Washington DC, those

12:07

numbers, 295, they don't mean anything

12:09

to me. I just know it

12:11

as the highway I take when I have to

12:14

drive into the main NPR offices in DC. This

12:17

process of connecting these ideas is called

12:19

building a cognitive map. So

12:21

not literally kind of being able to see a map,

12:23

but just having an idea of where things are and

12:25

how they're all connected. And

12:27

that's used when you're sort of navigating somewhere

12:30

you've recently been, you've just learning around, or

12:33

maybe you've been there for some time, but

12:35

you're having to really think about how different

12:37

places are connected. And you could

12:39

help get more experienced building this map by

12:41

being the decision maker, says Mary. If

12:44

you're the decision maker, you know, making the

12:46

decisions to turn right and turn left, you

12:48

know, so actively exploring your environment is better

12:50

than just say, being the

12:53

passenger where you know, you

12:55

are experienced the same route as the driver,

12:57

but you're not making the decisions. Hugo says,

12:59

pay extra attention to the intersections. What

13:01

you need to do is pay a little more attention

13:04

to the way the junctions are laid out and think,

13:06

okay, if we go into that junctions, not it's not

13:08

actually straight ahead. It's slightly to the

13:10

right. Also, the streets themselves can lay out

13:12

a story for you. Here's Ben. Most

13:15

inner city grids have some

13:18

semblance of streets and avenues

13:20

where they're numbered, going

13:22

one direction. And then this is where

13:25

every city typically does it a

13:27

little different. I lived in a city

13:29

in Ogden, Utah, and they

13:31

did presidents. So

13:34

it was like, instead of first, it was like

13:36

Washington, which even if you

13:38

don't know your president's down pat, you have

13:40

a general idea of where you are. So

13:43

like, you'll hit some president and be

13:45

like, Oh, well, Kennedy, that's way later.

13:48

So I'm in the wrong part of town. That's

13:50

kind of like knowing your city, knowing which

13:53

ones are the north south, which ones are the east

13:55

west. And you can follow those. The

13:58

next take wait, take wait for is. probably one

14:00

of the simplest, which is, as you

14:02

travel in your day to day life, just

14:04

look back. Literally, look behind you. As

14:07

you're navigating somewhere, just turn around

14:09

and look at where you came from every so often

14:11

so that you know how to get back. I mean,

14:13

that's something I use a lot while hiking. I'm

14:16

taking a particular path,

14:19

sort of looking around and saying, okay, this is what it looks

14:21

like when I know I have to take the left path or

14:24

something like that. This works if you're going to

14:26

a new place or if it's some restaurant you

14:28

go to all the time. If you just sort

14:30

of walk to the restaurant without looking behind you

14:32

or taking in the environment, you'll just have a

14:35

very like, this is the views I saw when

14:37

I went there, not some sort of

14:40

more holistic understanding of what the space looks

14:42

like. So it just helps

14:44

to be a bit more curious about the space around

14:46

you and what it looks like from different viewpoints. Be

14:49

more curious about the space around

14:51

you is probably the big overall

14:53

takeaway from all of this, because

14:55

we're not trying to be London

14:57

cabbies, I assume it's a matter

14:59

of simply being more confident in

15:01

the space around you, which helps

15:03

you stay calm. If you do

15:05

ever get lost, at which point,

15:07

just ask somebody. Okay, recap time

15:09

takeaway one, get lost on purpose. We've

15:11

got the time turn off your GPS

15:13

and figure out your way back home

15:15

or just walk around and explore a

15:17

little. And while you do that

15:19

take way to pick out big landmarks to

15:21

orient yourself. It helps if they're far away.

15:23

Also, if they're distinct outside my

15:26

office window, I have a cylinder type tower

15:28

is used like I cannot tell looking at

15:30

it, which way I'm facing because it looks

15:32

the same from every direction. So that's

15:35

an example of one that's not so useful. It

15:37

also helps if you've got a connection to those

15:40

landmarks, which brings us to take away three, use

15:42

narratives to help make connections between

15:45

landmarks and roads and places you

15:47

frequent. All of this will

15:49

help bolster these places in your memory.

15:51

And take away for look back, turn

15:53

around, see places from a different perspective,

15:56

and you'll have a better sense of both

15:58

where they and you are. For

16:02

more LifeKit, check out our other episodes. We

16:04

have one on how to pack for a

16:06

trip, another on how to be a great

16:09

roommate. You can find that at npr.org/LifeKit. And

16:12

if you love LifeKit and want

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more, subscribe to our newsletter at

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npr.org/LifeKit newsletter. Also, we'd

16:18

love to hear from you. If you

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have episode ideas or feedback you want

16:23

to share, email us at lifekit at

16:25

npr.org. Today's episode of LifeKit was produced

16:27

by Claire Marie Snyder. Our visuals editor

16:30

is Beck Harlan. Our digital editor is

16:32

Malka Garib. Megan Kane is the

16:34

supervising editor. Beth Donovan is the

16:37

executive producer. Our production team also

16:39

includes Andy Tago, Margaret Serino, Sophie

16:41

Douglas. Engineering support comes from Becky

16:43

Brown. Special thanks to

16:45

Pablo Fernandez Velasco, Nora Newcomb, Margaret

16:47

Tarampi, and Daniel Montela. I'm

16:49

Andrew Limbaugh. Thanks for listening. Thank

16:55

you.