Yak Shaving

Or, how you sat down to send one email and ended up reinstalling your operating system.

There are two kinds of productive days: (i) the day you finish what you planned, or (ii) the day you accidentally “Shave a Yak.”

Most of us live in the second one.

Well, that would be Yak Shaving. It is the noble art of doing seventeen unrelated things so that you can eventually do the one thing you actually wanted to do.

Yak Shaving is the practice of performing a long chain of seemingly irrelevant or trivial tasks that are logically required before you can complete your original task. Many times, it is procrastination, but quite often it is a “productive distraction” with a straight face. I may be genuinely working; unfortunately, just not on the thing I’m supposed to.

Yak Shaving

Blame MIT and a Cartoon Yak

The phrase was coined in the 1990s by Carlin J. Vieri, a PhD student at MIT. He borrowed the absurd imagery from a 1991 episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, which referenced a fictional “Yak Shaving Day.” Archive

Engineers, being engineers, looked at this nonsense and said, “Yes! That perfectly describes our lives.”

Thus, a ridiculous cartoon Yak became immortalized in developer folklore, marking the chasm of civilization, right there.

Actually Not Bad

But to be fair, occasionally, Shaving the Yak prevents future Yak herds.

Strategic Yak Shaving would be called maintenance. Accidental Yak Shaving would then be “Tuesday.” The difference is intent and boundaries, the two things we humans are famously bad at enforcing.

Contain the Yak

Here are a few ideas to contain the Yak, before it eats the day.

  1. Time-box side quests. “I’ll spend 20 minutes on this. Then I stop.” Actually stop.
  2. Write the original goal down. Physically. On Paper. Preferably with a fountain pen, so it feels morally binding.
  3. Separate cleanup days from execution days. Maintenance deserves its own calendar slot.
  4. Learn to tolerate mild imperfection. Yes, that config file could be prettier. No, the world will not end today.
  5. Recognize the early symptoms. The moment you say “while I’m at it…,” the Yak has entered the room.

Yak Shaving is the tax we pay for living in complex systems and having curious, optimization-obsessed brains. It’s equal parts comedy, tragedy, and accidental craftsmanship.

So next time you sit down to send a simple email and end up upgrading your router firmware, refactoring your dotfiles, reorganizing your desk, and questioning your life choices, take comfort in the fact that you’re not wasting time.

You’re merely grooming an imaginary Yak for the benefit of absolutely no one. A noble tradition, handed down from MIT engineers and cartoon animals alike.

The Yak remains unshaven. It always does.