Spend much time wandering the countryside of the UK and it’s only a matter of time before you begin to notice a curious set of landmarks.

These landmarks generally come in the form of squat, truncated obelisks or pillars about three feet tall that are most often perched atop prominent hills.

The landmarks have an aura of mystique around them, which they also seem to transfer onto the landscape.

Other than a cryptic set of inscriptions consisting of a few letters and numbers, they lack any kind of identifying signage.

They are concrete, decidedly utilitarian, obviously manufactured… And yet somehow manage to feel like a natural part of their surroundings.

Looking at them, it’s easy to think that they have always been there, and will always be there.

The truth, while interesting in its own right, is far more pedestrian.

The pillars—or trig points as they’re locally known—were initially constructed between 1935 and 1962 as part of the Retriangulation of Britain, an effort to provide more accurate maps of the country.

In case you need a refresher, triangulation is a mathematical concept stating that if you know the distance between two reference points, you can calculate the exact distance to any third point by measuring the angles to it at each of those initial references.

In other words, if we know the distance between A & B and the angles of x & y, **we can determine the distances of both AC and BC.

It’s a simple but brilliant concept with a long history dating back nearly 2,000 years.

In addition to being used to create the first truly accurate maps of countries, triangulation has been used to determine the heights of mountains (such as Mt. Everest) and even to determine the size of the Earth.

It’s safe to say that triangulation is one of the most tried and true mapping techniques we have available.

And while the mapping of physical geography has now been overtaken by more accurate and responsive GPS networks, when it comes to mapping and navigating the landscapes of our creative work, the older analog method of triangulation persists as perhaps the best tool we have available.

Triangulating Your Location

Perhaps the two most fundamental and persistent challenges we face as creators are understanding where we’re going and understanding how to get there.

While we often think of our most pressing problems as tactical (ie. “How do I grow my email list?”). In my experience, however, when we have clarity on our destination and direction, the tactics take care of themselves.

Clarity then, is a necessary first step to real progress toward our destination.

While we innately understand this, however, our understanding tends to lead us into the trap of waiting for clarity before attempting to move forward at all.

This is far from an efficient or useful way to gain clarity, however.

Because while clarity may be a pre-requisite for meaningful forward progress, movement is a pre-requisite for clarity.

Unfortunately, this idea doesn’t align with the way most of us think about progress, that any effort that doesn’t lead us closer to our goals is wasted.

But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact,that effort—and the accompanying movement—is a necessary part of establishing a series of reference points necessary to triangulate where we are in relation to where we want to be.

If we’re feeling lost or stuck, then, the most productive action we can take might be to simply pick a direction and climb the nearest hill to establish a new reference point.

It’s entirely likely—probable even—that the direction we pick won’t be the shortest or most efficient route to our ultimate destination. But if it gets us moving and helps us find clarity, it may just end up being the fastest, **even if it takes us in the entirely opposite direction from where we want to end up.

When it comes to clarity, all reference points are helpful. And the more we have, the more their benefits compound.

While we can triangulate our way to a given destination based on as little as two reference points, the accuracy and range of our route-making increases the more reference points we have.

So too does the level of nuance in our understanding of the landscape through which we’re traveling as well as our awareness of opportunities adjacent to our route.

What’s more, the reference points we establish have a way of being useful beyond simply calculating our immediate next step.

Sure, the hill ahead of us will provide a useful vantage point from which to plan our next move. But the trig point we set there may continue to be a useful reference in helping us triangulate the moves we’ll make 6 months or 6 years from now.

As a result, each hill we ascend increases the resolution of our internal map, both of the terrain we’ve already covered, as well as that which lays ahead.

It’s slow going, slogging up hill after hill, only to find we need to adjust our course, descend, and aim for a different hill on the horizon.

And yet this is precisely the type of wayfinding that sets us up for long-term success in any field.

One that, thanks to our extensive exploration and cartography we now know better than almost anyone else.

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This article originally appeared in my weekly Creative Wayfinding Newsletter. Each issue is the product of a week of work, and contains something not available for sale.

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