The Cartography of Life

From navigation to way finding to wireframes and life plans, humans are natural cartographers. Early nomadic humans used their instincts for hunting and foraging for food and temporary safety. Today, humans use many forms of mapping for communication such as; charts for productivity and finances, wireframes for building websites, creating mind maps for brainstorming, traveling and of course, mapping out a life plan by gluing pretty pictures to a vision board. Even the most geographically challenged and unorganized of humans use maps simply by navigating through the functions of their phone or asking for directions. They still had to find someone to ask, heh?

Now, let’s have some silly fun that maaay be the beginning of something life-changing. How about for the next few days and perhaps into the weekend, try to notice all of the ways that you use some form of mapping in your daily life? Most of our routine navigation is done on autopilot so let’s shift into manual flight mode for this exercise? When you notice your mind drifting off, break out a notebook and write down the tasks for the rest of the day. If you hit a roadblock on a work project, try creating a mind map by writing the end goal in the center of the paper. Next, draw lines extending all the way around the center word and on each line write the first word that comes to you. Continue this until all the lines have a different word on them and be sure to add as many lines and words as necessary. If you’re not dealing with a particular issue then, make a plan to do something you’ve been thinking about for a while. For this mind map write down how you will get there, what will you wear, who will be with you and what you’ll eat. If you’d rather think of something more long term, find a picture of one of your future goals. Perfect! You’re now officially a life cartographer.

The benefits of this exercise are to improve memory, organization, to generate a flow of creative thoughts for brainstorming, enhance presentation skills and to stay focused on goals and planning. Creating a map of anything imaginable is a productive use of a break from a routine. It does not have to take a lot of time, in fact, the less time it takes, the better. This way, you cannot overthink your initial instincts. Before you know it, you will be mapping at every idle moment that comes along.