Why nearest-door-first beats a planned list
Nearest-door-first hands you the closest unworked door each time you finish one, recalculated as you go. It beats a fixed precomputed route because a plan made at the start of a session stops being correct the moment a door runs long, a street turns out gated, or you skip a house for a dog.
Fixed routes decay during the session
Every plan assumes the session goes as expected. None do. Once you are off the planned order, a precomputed sequence is actively unhelpful because following it now means backtracking.
Recalculating is nearly free
Working out the nearest unworked door is cheap enough to do on the phone every time, offline included. There is no reason to commit to an order in advance when the answer can be current instead.
What it removes
The decision. You finish a door, the next one is already chosen, and you walk. That is the entire benefit and it is larger than it sounds because of how many times a day it happens.
Common questions
- Is nearest-door-first actually optimal?
- Not in the strict routing sense. It is better in practice because it stays correct as the session changes, which a globally optimal precomputed route does not.
- What if I want to work a specific street first?
- Lasso that street and work it as its own set. Nearest-door-first orders within what you selected.
- Does it work with no signal?
- Yes. The calculation happens on the phone, and the map is read from storage once the area is saved.
More on routes
Planning the walk: ordering doors, cutting dead time between them, and route tools compared.
- Route planning for door-to-door
- What route optimisation actually saves you
- Walking routes versus driving routes
- How many doors belong in one route
- Route planning apps for field reps
- Using Google Maps to knock, and where it breaks
- Multi-stop route planners compared
- Free route planning for reps
- Taking a whole block at once