Mazes can be hard, not because any particular left-or-right decision is difficult … or even that 100 left-or-right decisions are tiresome. Mazes are hard because each of those decisions are isolated from the context of the goal you’re trying to achieve.

Depending on the type of maze you’re thinking about—or rather, how you’re imagining yourself relative to the maze—you may feel differently about the above statement.

Mazes viewed from the top-down—like what’s found in a puzzle book— are “easy” because you always can see where you are trying to get to, even if you don’t know the best route. You can plan and forecast if you’re headed in the right direction, due to your perspective. You can see what is coming up ahead.

When you are inside of a maze, that changes. With walls all around you, your perspective is limited. You can choose to go left or to go right, but each binary decision is a guess. Without an ability to position yourself relative to your goal or to project the outcomes of a decision, your path may as well be selected at random.

When you are in a maze, you cannot also be above it to ensure meaningful progress.

Instead, you need a map: a proxy for that aerial view of the maze. A map allows you to trace your progress, maintain a clear sense of your objective, and plan what you’ll do next.

Most of us don’t create maps of our mazes. Maybe it’s because we “know” where we’re trying to get to, or because when we’re making a map, we think we’re not working on the problem itself. But being lost in a maze doesn’t happen because we don’t know we are supposed to “get out” or because we aren’t good problem solvers; it’s about the limited perspective that being in a maze affords.

What is a current objective of yours? Do you have a map that allows you to track how each contribution of effort moves you towards your objective?

The next time you find yourself making decision after decision without a clear sense of progress, maybe it’s time to step back and draw the map.

Thanks for reading,