Not a big deal.
climbing LEFT turn on CSN R056.
doesn't automatically tell me that I will be at that radial at only 600' AGL. Whether I will be south of it or in it or north of it upon reaching 800'MSL depends on what I'm flying. The need to choose an intercept seems obvious.
I'm not sure it's
@luvflyin' "picture in your head". At least not completely.
For me, the picture is there - on the chart and on the needles.
i think we get stuck looking at a bunch of numbers. For some people numbers make intuitive sense. Some of us need more. I have a numerical weakness. I transpose them and don't retain them. If I focus on numbers, I can easily screw up (I did that just this past week!). I need that picture to give numbers context. Apparently I'm not alone. I remember when I took one of those 2-day courses for my private knowledge test. One thing they said was the most common wrong answer on the cross country questions was selecting the answer 180° off. Doing calculations, but without looking at the map to realize a heading of 090 is
not going to take you from New York to Wisconsin.