yak shaving

English

Etymology

Uncertain.

More modern use of the term came up in a 1991 Ren & Stimpy cartoon citing "Yak Shaving Day," a Christmas-like Holiday where participants hang diapers instead of stockings, stuff rubber boots with cole slaw, and watch for the shaven yak to float by in his canoe.

Noun

yak shaving (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem.

   I was doing a bit of yak shaving this morning, and it looks like it might have paid off.

2. (idiomatic) The actually useless activity you do that appears important when you are consciously or unconsciously procrastinating about a larger problem.

   I thought I'd get more work done if I just fixed a problem with my .emacs file, but then I spent the whole afternoon yak shaving.

Quotations

• For usage examples of this term, see the citations page.

See also

• bikeshedding
• forget, when up to one's neck in alligators, that the mission is to drain the swamp