Some time ago I wrote about why I think having navigation maps face north is superior to having them face in the direction of travel. Admittedly, one difficulty in such an arrangement is turning: it’s not always clear whether to turn left or right if the map is not facing the direction of your travel. Here is a good hack that can help you overcome this difficulty.

Suppose you arrive at a turning point:

Your navigation system (facing north) may show this, for example.

It’s not immediately obvious that you’re supposed to turn left, sharply. Here is what you can do: draw an imaginary line that specifies your current direction on the map, and place an imaginary steering wheel at the intersection. Now grab the real steering wheel at the point where the extended line meets an imaginary steering wheel, and turn towards the direction in which you’re heading, like this:

This is how you know which direction to turn in (and how much to turn!)

All you need to do is imagine overlaying the map onto your steering wheel, to know where to grab the steering wheel and how to turn it. The above method has the added benefit of letting you know how much to turn — the sharper the turn, the more you’ll have to rotate the steering wheel!

If you don’t care about the magnitude of the turn, just the direction, a simpler method is simply to turn the wheel in the direction defined by the arc drawn from the final direction to the original one, like this:

A simple way to figure out the direction of turn

In other words, simply imagine placing the map on the steering wheel, grab the wheel at a point where the final direction of travel intersects the steering wheel, and turn it towards the point of intersection of the original direction of travel and the steering wheel.

Try it, it’s really easy, and I know you’ve been antsy to switch the map to be displayed facing north!