A few years ago, I was walking with someone, and he said that he's a very lazy person. For example, he travels light and does not carry much around with him. He just carried around a pencil, which was quite light, considering that he was a college student, and did not carry books, computers, paper, water, or lunch around with him. (This was during the days before mobile phones with browsers was common.)
One way that he liked to walk, he said, was that he liked to take the Pythagorean route. This was based on Pythagoras' Theorem, which stated that moving in a diagonal direction covered a shorter distance, than moving to the same point covered by the sum of the horizontal and vertical distances of a right-angled triangle. That certainly is a much more efficient way of walking. Of course, sometimes there are certain impediments that block people, especially in cities, which are structured mainly as grids and as rectangles. Still, the general idea that to move in a diagonal direction to where you would like, especially for long distances, can save some time, especially if there are not too many impediments by taking such a diagonal route.
