It's that time of year, folks: shoveling season. I've been refining my strats for nearly 20 years, so I thought I'd share them with you to make your next driveway clearing a new PB. Feel free to post strategy discussions here if you'd like. This guide assumes you have at least a somewhat long, two car wide driveway, although the principles outlined here could theoretically be applied to different sized areas. Also, this guide is somewhat obsoleted by snow blower and plow strats.
Introduction
Below you can find the template I will be using for this analysis. The black lines indicate the borders of the driveway itself, and the white is snow covered area. We will soon see what clear area looks like in these diagrams. Yellow arrows will be used to indicate walking patterns, while red arrows will indicate shoveling patterns. An orange arrow will indicate both walking and shoveling concurrently.
(https://i.imgur.com/gERgpbM.png)
The Stripe
Begin by shoveling a single line straight down the center of the driveway, from the edge of your house all the way to the end. If your shovel fills up at any point while doing this, throw the snow off to the side. Preferably you would throw it out of the driveway and into the bank, but it isn't too much of a problem if you aren't able to.
(https://i.imgur.com/pKyyBBK.png) (https://i.imgur.com/waE97bY.png)
The Push
Make your way back up the driveway, staying in the center and pushing snow out toward one side as far as you can. I recommend putting one foot forward and extending the shovel out as far as it can go before giving the snow a final flick. This should get the snow piled up fairly close to the edge of the driveway. Move up towards the house, repeating the process until you're all the way back at the top. In the interest of keeping the shovel in your dominant hand, you might want to do this on the left hand side of the driveway as shown in the image below (assuming you are right-handed).
(https://i.imgur.com/FT7Ca3C.png) (https://i.imgur.com/gbesRux.png) (https://i.imgur.com/Bh3BOxO.png)
If again, you prefer to keep the shovel in your dominant hand, repeat the Push on the other side of the driveway going down before moving onto the next step. With this done, your driveway will look like this:
(https://i.imgur.com/zgMIJbL.png)
The Cleanup
Finally, to clean up the edges. Starting on the side you originally did the push on, scrape a line of snow up to the edge of the driveway, and lift it just as high as you need to to get it into the bank. As winter progresses and the banks get higher, this step will get a bit harder. If there was significant snowfall on the driveway, you may have to do several scoops before you can move on. These things aren't really problems as because of this strategy you now only have to move the snow a couple of feet at most.
(https://i.imgur.com/JT7Kbcz.png) (https://i.imgur.com/S0Rxvws.png) (https://i.imgur.com/Yk278U4.png)
Repeat on the other side going down, and you're done!
(https://i.imgur.com/zKF6ikm.png)
Conclusion
I hope you realize the advantages of this strategy. Not only is it very fast, it also requires about as little movement as possible. You only need to travel up and down your driveway 5 times (6 to get back to the house) if done optimally, as opposed to crossing it horizontally dozens and dozens of times if done the "traditional" way. You also never have to step in snow OR be shoveling with your off hand. Finally, very little work has to be done hoisting heavy shovelfuls back and forth. Most of the heavy lifting is done right at the edge of the snowbank! If you're someone who is going to be shoveling a driveway at some point in the future, I'd recommend trying this method out. It certainly works for me.