Chez Chesler

Not just another phrase for the Googlewhackers, this describes a phenomenon I've observed in how I navigate. I've been taking the bus to work. The bus stop is at the corner of State Street and Devonshire Street. Congress Street is one short block east of Devonshire Street. I find that in the mornings, I consistently head south on Devonshire Street, and go the two blocks to Milk Street where I turn left and go into the building where I work; in the evenings I consistently cross Milk Street and go a few yards east to Congress Street and walk north to State Street before going a block left to the bus stop. When I was working near the Cambridgeside Galleria, on both trips, garage to work and work to garage, I would walk along Land Boulevard first, and cross late, and this had little to do with traffic. At home I sometimes go out the kitchen door, but return through the front door. Normally I'm an inveterate optimizer, counting steps, counting average minutes from various optional exits, counting fares between a 10-ride bus pass, a monthly pass, or a weekly Combo+ plus the makeup rate. But when I'm walking I seem to come and go differently, following a path similar to a hysteresis curve. I wondered why I do this. My best guess is that when I get off the bus I want to head mostly south, so I take the street (Devonshire, not State) that is closest to the direction I wish to go; similarly when I leave the office I want to head mostly north, and Congress, not Milk, allows me to head in that direction. If I were carrying a GPS, or playing a video game, there might be an arrow pointing to my desired destination -- I'm just doing the best I can, in a greedy algorithm sense, to follow that arrow. Is this a known phenomenon in the study of human behavior?