English

Noun

yak shaving ‎(uncountable)

1. 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. 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 usage examples of 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

References

1. ↑ Brown, Jeremy (2000-02-11), “Yak Shaving”, in (Please provide the title of the work), retrieved 2014-02-02
2. ↑ Vieri, Carlin (2008-06-05), “Talk:yak shaving”, in (Please provide the title of the work) comment from Vieri.