Do you shovel a straight path in the snow? I am referring to when you shovel a path equal to the width of your snow shovel–not for example when you shovel the entire sidewalk.
Mine curve left and then curve right…–leaving the impression I was probably drunk when I shoveled…
As I have never shoveled snow in my entire life, I’m going to have to vote “Other”.
If I’m shoveling snow on my sidewalk, I’m clearing the entire sidewalk. Individual runs with the shovel while I do that usually meander a bit, but in the end, what gets shoveled winds up being a straight, edge-to-edge clearing.
My first pass is down the center of the driveway, from the garage to the street. I often turn around at the street, look back at my path and wonder how I fucked up a straight line so badly.
My father was a stickler for straight square edges and sharp corners, all the while insisting we pile the snow where the meltwater would drain away from the cleared area. Before the sun came up. We also used a surveyor’s transit in the spring to get the rows straight in the garden. I’m afraid I take after him…
Straight down the walk and driveway. There shall be no part of walk or driveway area left unshoveled with left and right meanderings.
I don’t usually shovel until my truck can’t 4x4 through the snow. Which means like 12 inches. Then I’ll shovel the whole damn driveway.
My dog likes to go out to the back of the yard to do her business. I used my new snow blower to clear a path for her. I just followed her footprints, and didn’t realize until I was done that it was a sweeping curve, not a straight path.
Omitting for the moment the opportunity to brag about having a snowplowing service (which I can barely afford, TBH) the answer is that previously, it depended on the amount of snow. If there was just a little, I’d shovel it randomly in all directions. If there was a lot, I would use my sled shovel – a really remarkable device for heavy snowfalls. You’d pick up a big load of snow and just pull it out like a sled and dump it near the curb. It naturally left straight lines. Both of my last two houses had long frontages so there was lots of room to dump the snow.
Now that I’m old and creaky, my major winter exercise is going over to the front window to watch my plow guy earn his money.
I usually shovel out a rectangle. I usually start at the top of the driveway, and slowly work my down the left half (facing the house) and then come back and work on the right half if my husband hasn’t finished it. The right half is harder, because the retaining wall between the driveway and the lawn is much higher on that side.
Each shovel-full is usually approximately a straight line, but a short one.
If there’s just a little snow, we just scrape some lines into it, and let the solar-powered self-defrosting driveway do its thing. That is, our driveway is black asphalt, and slopes so it faces the sun. If we get some of the black showing on a sunny day, it warms up and melts the snow near it.
Like @bobot I start down the middle of my driveway. But my path is straight, but often at an angle to the driveway edges. Go figure.
I shovel a path with a swoopy curve in our backyard, because kids cut through on their way to school.
But straight down sidewalks and driveways, because I’m shoveling the entire width of it eventually.
But if I decide to “just keep going” and do a path down the entire block, then I get creative. A nice sine wave, with some loop-de-loops when I get to a wide apron.
Thirded, especially the part about “how the hell did I screw up a straight line THAT badly?!” And since we only really use one car when the weather is snowy, the janky line will always veer into the 2nd car’s lane, just making more work for me, since I’ll only shovel half the drive if there’s a lot of snow.
Just a few more years and these kids can start doing it for me…
When I’m shoveling the sidewalk, I do a straight line along one edge of the sidewalk, leaving a clear path one shovel-width wide. Which is only about half the width of the sidewalk. Not out of laziness, but because under some winter conditions, the shoveled half ends up being more treacherous than the snowy half, so it’s good to leave both options available.
While I was still living and working at a university, there always ended up being foot-trodden paths across the various campus greenspaces, where students followed the path made by other students before them. I always tried to be the first one out after each snow, and would deliberately walk my path a couple of extra times, because that way, it’d be my path that everyone else followed, so I could make it properly straight (and incidentally also exactly lined up with the path I would be taking). Leave it to the other students, and it always ended up meandering, which drove me batty.
Shovel??? Fuck that Shit! Snowblower, Baby!
Shovel down the middle, straight as an arrow, and then either shovel off to the appropriate sides from the widening middle, or do the same with the electric snowblower if it’s light.
Snowblower!? Fuck that shit! Move to where it doesn’t snow!
And now we have come back into a full circle 
Well, that wasn’t want I meant to do, I meant to show that the first reply was almost the same as your suggestion.
It’s late, I should be in bed. Grabs cats and wanders off…
Like Paintcharge I do nothing until my Willys with chains can not get through it. This happens about every ten years or so.
After that, either I continue with nothing, or I get out the chained up Ford 9N with front loader, & back scraper and plow the long driveway. Sometimes my neighbor beats me to it with his 8N. This year he got a new-to-him Kabota. I may let him play with that for a while. It is 4WD!