My initial advice would be don't worry about it. The problem mad_bear has is he's too busy trying to learn to fly an aeroplane to worry too much about working out where is and how to NAVIGATE from A to B. He needs to work out the nuts & bolts of getting the aeroplane to do what he wants and to understand what and how this is all happening. As he gets the hang of that a little more then he can split his looking out of the window time between "seeing & avoiding" and taking in his surroundings. It's not a black art navigating. But is best learnt when one can handle an aeroplane safely without it taking 95% of ones brain power.
When it comes to nav I agree in many respects Slim. Good nav is dependent much more on knowing what's between the waypoints and where you should be in relation In my OPNION new PPLs spend too much time with Whizz Wheels. Hours are spent planning a route, working out the wind and calculating times to the nearest millsecond. All of this based around the assumption that the wind speed and direction is going to be exactly as forecast and that the compass, DI will be perfect and nothing will come up to make the pilot change is flight at all.
For me? If I'm heading north and the wind is from the east then I'll just add a few degrees and amend my heading en route. The forecasters are guessing so why can't i a little bit? If there's a bit of a headwind I'll add a few minutes to my estimate etc etc.. this side of the flight planning I'll do en route and make changes as i see fit.
This frees up more time to check weather, notams and most importantly go over the planned route. The number of PPLs I see who do the maths beautifully and then dive into an aeroplane without actually LOOKING at where they're going and what they expect is amazing.
That said, all the above works for me.. may not work for others. I use GPS, not as a sole means of nav, but if I spot a town, I work out where I think it should be and then I don't use three distinguising features.. i look at the GPS!