My two cents worth.

Visualize where you are and where you will be in a couple of minutes.

Concerning accuracy, this is a direct quote from my instructor: "When I say fly at 5000', I want to see the 100' needle bisecting the zero on the altimeter."

My point exactly! :)

I agree! One of the best pieces of advice I was given was, "Never let your aircraft go where your mind has not been before." In other words, as previous posters have implied, always think out every move before you do it. Good luck.

Another "situational awareness" tip: It's helpful to always have a mental image of a 'compass circle' around you, always aligned to magnetic north, like your gyro heading indicator (whatever variety your aircraft may have). After awhile, it becomes second nature to think, for example, "I'm flying a heading of 175 deg., so a turn to 250 will be a right turn (for the shortest turn) to the west," or whatever.

Crank up the old pc, load up any old aircraft with an Autopilot and fly around learning how to see big picture… the autopilot enables you to not spend effort handflying on some joystick that doesnt reflect the real aircraft so dont bother… so this exercise is simply to get your mind to build a 3d model in your head… mentally hard and expensive to learn both at once in aircraft so get ahead of it while you can