yak shaving

English

An illustration by David Revoy of the metaphor. The character Pepper is depicted literally shaving a yak.

Etymology

Coined by Carlin Vieri in his time at the MIT AI Lab (1993–1998) after viewing a segment at the end of a 1991 episode of The Ren and Stimpy Show. The segment featured “Yak Shaving Day,” a Christmas-like Holiday where participants hang diapers instead of stockings, stuff rubber boots with coleslaw, and watch for the shaven yak to float by in his enchanted canoe.

Noun

yak shaving (uncountable)

1. Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one 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. A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task.

   I looked at a reference manual for my car just to answer one question, but I spent the whole afternoon with my nose buried in it, just yak shaving, and got no work done on the car itself.

   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:yak shaving.

See also

• bikeshedding
• when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp