Planning a Day With Many Stops: A Simple Checklist

A day with one destination is easy to plan. A day with five or six stops is where time disappears: a wrong order sends you back and forth across town, a stop takes longer than expected, and the last errand gets pushed to tomorrow. A few minutes of planning before you set off makes a big difference.

1. Write down every stop first

Start with a complete list before you think about order. Include the address, what you need to do there, and anything that limits when you can go:

• Opening and closing times
• Appointments at a fixed time
• Places that are busy at certain hours, such as banks at lunchtime or supermarkets after work
• Anything that must happen before something else, like collecting a parcel before delivering it

2. Put the fixed times in place

Stops with a fixed appointment are the anchors of your day. Place them first, then fit the flexible stops around them. If you have a 2 pm meeting across town, there's no point planning a loop that ends on the opposite side of the city at 1:50.

3. Group stops by area

Look at the stops on a map and group the ones that are close together. Visiting everything in one neighbourhood before moving on almost always beats zig-zagging. A simple approach that works well:

1. Start with the stop nearest your starting point.
2. Go to the nearest remaining stop each time.
3. Check whether finishing near home or your next destination changes the order.

This isn't guaranteed to be the perfect order, but for up to about ten stops it's usually very close. For dozens of stops a day, such as delivery rounds, dedicated route optimisation software is worth considering, because the number of possible orders grows very quickly.

4. Enter the stops in order

In the Plan Your Route planner, enter your start and destination, then press Add stop for each place in between, in the order you chose. The planner shows each leg's distance and time separately, which makes it easy to spot a leg that's much longer than it should be. Try swapping two stops and compare the total time.

5. Add time for each stop

Driving time is only part of the day. Estimate how long you'll spend at each place, and be honest about it:

Add all the stop times to the planner's driving time to see whether the day actually fits.

6. Build in a buffer

Something always takes longer than planned. Keep 15 to 20 percent of your day unplanned, or put the least important stop last so it can move to another day without disrupting anything else.

7. Avoid the busiest hours

Route planners estimate time using normal road speeds. Rush hour can double the time of some legs. If you have flexibility, do the longest drives outside morning and evening peaks, and save the stops close to each other for the busiest part of the day.

8. Share the plan

If someone else needs to know where you'll be, send them the route. In Plan Your Route, press Copy link after planning, and the link opens the same route with the same stops on their device.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Planning by memory. Places that feel close together can be on opposite sides of a highway with no easy crossing. Always check the map.
• Ignoring one-way streets and U-turns. A stop on the wrong side of a divided road can add several kilometres.
• Forgetting fuel and breaks. On a long day, plan a fuel stop and a meal rather than squeezing them in.
• Too many stops. If the plan only works with nothing going wrong, it has too many stops.