What are some ways (if any) to improve one's sense of direction?

I have had poor sense of directions. I have noticed improvement in remembering directions by following a simple mantra. Create a mental picture by Tagging any shop, park or other landmark with a particular route for easy remembrance. Next time when I'm going to that place, I can see those landmarks which I have marked in my mind and go ahead. Feed your sub-conscious with the 'tags' so that you don't have to specifically think about the tags. Sub-conscious will do it for you. So next time you are lost somewhere try to remember the tag you have given to that area. I am still trying to master this technique but it has really helped me a lot and when nothing works, I switch on my GPS :)

Tagging  your current position with last identifiable landmark is a very old and trustable method. This is even used in navigation of passenger aircrafts as a backup to GPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation).   Its not much different from vector additions you might have learnt in your high school.   I however, try to follow much more ancient method. I look at the sky (if visible or any other high building) and try to mark my path with respect to the position of sun or stars (or the closeness/furtherness of the building and which face I am facing now). Also, I follow a linear count policy. Its like if I take a right, I increase the count by +1 and if I take a left, I reduce it by -1. When I have to get back to my origin, I simply try to reset my count to zero.   But no matter where you are, if you have a sense of north-east-west-south directions when you were at your origin and at your current position, you can almost always get back to your origin.

Let me first welcome you to the club. After so many frustrating and embarrassing years living with it, I finally found the name of special brain condition (inability to remember roads or poor sense of direction) I suffer from. It's called Topographical Agnosia. Visit link below and see if experiences listed by people match with yours. If not, maybe your problem is different. http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-58770,00.html The problem is very difficult to explain to someone. People usually brush it aside. I can feel each and every word of what people wrote there. I always believed that it has something to do with some part of my brain. Some more details and a very nice video here http://about-brains.com/some-people-have-absolutely-no-sense-of-direction-topographical-agnosia/ http://about-brains.com/some-people-have-absolutely-no-sense-of-direction-topographical-agnosia/ If you know someone who has a similar problem, do them a favor and share following links. Strangely it feels good that I'm not alone in the world and there's some company. Frankly, I have no solution to the problem yet. Thankfully I'm improving with age and experience. Technology comes to my rescue many a times. Solution described by below also helps. But the best thing you can do is to face the problem instead of avoiding it. I used to avoid going out alone. Now, with support from friends and loved ones, I decided to face it. I hope it helps. Edit: Link for similar experiences is updated.

I have a poor sense of direction. There is a one practical exercise that helps me: Rubik's Cube. As widely believed, it is a memorization problem, so let me explain how it helps. Solving a rubik involves bringing the same color faces together. At least that is the problem statement. In order to truly appreciate the problem, you need to think in terms of "pieces" and their "orientation". And that requires a certain level of visual imagination which is directly proportional to one's sense of direction. Although I have been steadily improving my technique for solving rubik, I still find the puzzle disorienting whenever I try to devise an improvement on the algorithm. When I am finally able to appreciate the "orientation" component of the solution that I designed without understanding it fully, I get an "aha" moment. My guess, and I may be wrong, is that rubik exercises the same cognitive faculties that help in visualizing directions (the world and its dimensions). So, here are my two cents on improving your sense of direction: Improve your sense of visual orientation by solving and improving upon rubik.

I am not sure how effective it will be universally however, as per the fire fighters, defense personals and airline crew, they are trained for the sense of directions using dark rooms. During the training, they are sent to a dark room which might be filled with smoke too. Then just using either the light coming through the crack in the door on the other end they try to find their way out. Or else, they are shown the map of the area before letting them in and then in the dark they practically try to find their way out. Hope this helps. However, Google maps rocks!!! \m/

Having a bad sense of direction has been debilitating and embarrassing for me. I used to be terrified to drive outside of my own neighborhood. This drastically limited the jobs I could apply for, the friends I could meet, and the adventures I could take. Even with a GPS device or on a familiar route I am absent minded enough that I can easily make mistakes that take me miles out of my way and make me ridiculously late. I don’t know if my sense of direction will ever significantly improve but depending solely on GPS seems to have made it worse so these are some recommendations based on how I’ve been trying to cope:Hang a map in your homeI printed and laminated a map of the SF Bay area and hung it on my wall. I studied the freeways and major streets. I forced myself several time to draw my own map and label the streets. This has really helped. I also keep a map in my glovebox.Turn off the GPSWhen I need to go to a new place, I draw the route making note of each transition AND the distance between them. When I drive there for the first time I turn off my music and try to note the interesting buildings or landscaping at each transition. Almost inevitably I do get lost and often have to switch on my GPS but I learn the places that trip me up and the route to get back. I go home and study my map after this happens. Why do this? In a http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/ at University College in London, researchers found that the cognitive exercise required of London cabbies resulted in physical changes in the brain, observing more gray matter and an enlarged rear section of the hippocampi in their subjects. The inverse was also observed in http://phys.org/news/2010-11-reliance-gps-hippocampus-function-age.html at McGill University where researchers saw the effects of GPS dependance/laziness in brain scans that showed decreased amounts of gray matter. Veronique Bohbot, a neuroscientist involved with these studies suggests that over reliance on GPS reduces our ability to form mental maps, a skill that plays a role in other important activities such as studying, planning and remembering where you placed something (like your parked car :) Another good reason comes from http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072824, a Harvard professor and author of a new book about human navigation, “The Lost Art of Finding Our Way.” He argues that the process of finding your way leads you to tune into your surroundings. With GPS, he said, “you’re losing this chance to have a greater awareness of your environment. It’s almost like depriving yourself of music, or a conversation with another person. There’s a richness that you’re missing out on.” Which brings me to a favorite quote:The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. - R. D. LaingAsk for helpIf you have people with you tell them upfront that you easily get lost and that you need their help navigating. As I often get lost on foot as well I’ve learned to ask other pedestrians. Don’t be embarrassed, having a bad sense of direction doesn’t imply you are stupid. I know plenty of otherwise intelligent people who get lost easily. I think of Indiana Jones joking “you know Marcus, he once got lost in his own museum.” Play video gamesI blame at least some of my bad sense of direction on the fact that my mother prohibited video games. http://www.mpg.de/research/video-games-brain?filter_order=L&research_topic= have found at least moderate improvement in spatial navigation, memory formation, strategic planning and fine motor skills of the hands in adults and http://www.cdmc.ucla.edu/PG_Media_biblio_files/kaveri_greenfield_1994.pdf who played video games such as Super Mario 64 for 30 minutes a day. Shooter games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto have also been indicated in other https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-a0034857.pdf as having a positive effect on spatial skills. --Here are a couple of things I have heard about but have not yet tried. Would love to hear about it if anyone does try them.Guided dreams?Many http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2012/06/memories-reactivated-in-sleep.html indicate we can learn while sleeping and one by researchers at http://www.medicaldaily.com/our-brains-navigation-system-active-during-sleep-during-our-waking-hours-324022 found that our brain’s navigation system is as active during sleep as our waking hours. So why not try dreaming of maps and navigating?Testosterone treatment? (lol)This http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151207081824.htm at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that men consistently performed better than women at wayfinding tasks in a virtual environment but that when women were given a drop of testosterone under their tongue, their abilities improved. The lines show how men and women navigated a route. The blue lines are the women's routes, and the red lines are the men's. The lines show that the men arrived faster and solved more tasks. Credit: NTNUDouble DutchAccording to National Geographic’s http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/brain-games/videos/a-double-dutch-brain-game/ this sport requires an off the chart spatial awareness so it can’t hurt, right?Get the app?I have an iphone but I’ve heard there is an Android app called https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.georgez.android.internalgps&hl=en that you can use to improve your ability to form mental maps. Haven't seen any reviews yet...

Spend more time outdoors and become familiar with the Suns directions in relation to the times of year. Doing rely on gps guidance for everything. It will make your brain lazy about figuring things out itself.

For people with a terrible sense of direction like me: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Zippr&hl=en I use an app called Zippr. It is a great app which uses google maps! using Zippr I can save my current address and it gets saved as a zippr code(eg: 1234ABCD). I can send that zippr code to my friends and they can navigate to the address. Addresses of offices and houses can be converted to a simple code. I think a lot of hassle with addresses and explaining directions to people can be solved with this simple App!!