Map of progress ("You are here")

Alongside a standard table of contents, practically all educational nonfiction would benefit from the inclusion a visual representation of its contents.

A visual layout feels less like a reference and more like a roadmap, helping to:

1. Reorient ("you are here")
2. Remind ("here’s where you've already been")
3. Reassure ("here’s where we’re going and how we’ll get there")

And, in the case of a non-linear book:

4. Reroute ("here’s where you can jump to next")
5. Refer ("here's that bit you were looking for")

This pattern makes a big improvement to readers getting lost and a small improvement to the problem of readers giving up.11If you've been following me through the woods for hours, you're far more likely to continue doing so if I'm able to show you a map of where we've been, where we are, and where we're going.

How it helps

In a linear, start-to-finish book, the map reminds readers of what they’ve already learned, and of how it’s all building up toward the big payoff.22Although these reminders might feel somewhat trivial, any coach will tell you that there's an awful lot of motivation available from raising the perceptions of "I’m getting somewhere" and "it’s going somewhere."

In a non-linear, jump-around book, the map acts as an alternative (or complement) to other navigation aids like inline indexing, allowing readers to decide where they want to go next, and to jump around without the fear of missing anything.

In either case, the simple act of presenting the reader with a map can act as an advance organizer.

How to make it work

The simplest, most literal map is just a 1:1 representation of your book's chapters.33There's nothing wrong with this (Hormozi did it), but you'll ideally want to do it fairly early in the writing process, since it's very likely that the act of creating the map will create opportunities to improve your book's structure. Alternatively, the map can deviate from the book's contents as a visual framework, toolbox, visual metaphor, or sketchnote.

Put the map of progress at the start or end of each chapter, marked-up in some way to identify where the reader is currently up to.

One variant, for linear books, is to progressively add additional details to the map for what has already passed, while offering vaguer "placeholders" for what’s yet to come. This approach is similar to progressive framework, with the added benefits of make their notes redundant, repetition is reinforcement, and gotta catch ‘em all. Adding this extra information is strong, but situational, since it can easily devolve into an overcrowded "wall of text" that fails in its original purpose as a map.

To complement what is already being achieved by the Table of Contents, this map should be presented with at least a visual layout (e.g., a table), and ideally with full illustrations or iconography.

The map’s visuals aren’t arbitrary, but should repeat key diagrams or frameworks from the chapters being referenced. You want a reader to be remembering the diagram they’ve already seen and understood, not trying to figure out how some new visual relates to what they read an hour ago. (See also: dual coding theory)

If the necessary diagrams or frameworks don’t exist, they should be created, such as with any three things can be a framework, whiteboardable core framework, visual metaphor, anthropomorphize it, or messy doodles.

If there’s no reasonable way to use meaningful, repeated visuals, consider simple iconography instead.