Draw your neighbourhood from memory, but include only the places you can reach in five minutes. Do not check a map first. Begin at your front door and mark the routes that come easily: the crossing, the shop, the tree at the corner, the path you take when you are late.
The result will not be accurate, and accuracy is not the point. A remembered map records importance. The street you use every day grows long and detailed; a closer street may vanish because you never turn into it.
Add what changes a decision
On a second pass, mark the details that make you choose one route over another. Perhaps a crossing is slow, a pavement narrows, or one side of the street stays shaded. Include useful things that ordinary maps omit: a place to sit, a sheltered doorway, a reliable patch of evening sun.
Use simple marks rather than careful drawing. A circle can mean pause; a broken line can mean a route avoided; a star can mark a view. The faster the marks are, the less tempted you will be to make the page look authoritative.
A personal map is less about where things are than about how a place asks you to move.
Walk beyond the edge
Take the page outside and walk toward its emptiest side. At the five-minute boundary, continue for one more block. Record the first useful detail you find there. This creates a small hinge between the known neighbourhood and the one you have not yet learned.
When you return, add the missing streets lightly. Notice where your memory enlarged, compressed, or rotated the real arrangement. Those distortions are not mistakes to erase; they show which parts of the place carry the most attention.
Repeat in another season
The practical map changes. Snow closes a shortcut. Leaves open a view. Construction moves a crossing. A café adds tables and makes a corner feel occupied. Redrawing the same five minutes a few months later records how both the neighbourhood and your habits have moved.
Keep the versions together. Over time they become a portrait of familiarity: not a complete territory, but the changing shape of what feels near.