Yak Shaving

Yak Shaving
[MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on.

http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/03/05/yak_shaving.html:

In the section Life Hacks: Overclocking your Productivity, there was fun little article called Yak Shaving by Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann. "Yak shaving is the technical term for when you find yourself eight levels deep - and possibly in an recursive loop - in a stack of jobs." The example they give is:

You start out deciding to tidy your room and you realize that in order to do that you'll need some more trash bags, so you need to go to the shops, which will involve you getting out the car, but the car needs gas, so you'll need to go to the gas station first, which means you should probably find your gas discount card, which involves finding your keys, which are in the room somewhere...

They talk about many hackers spending a lot of their time "lost in life's subroutines" and that "some of us like solving puzzles a bit more than we like solved puzzles." They suggest that super-efficient hackers "learn when to say no to the temptation of endless fiddling." Veeeery interesting. So this is what I've been doing all my life. Shaving Yaks.



Tosar o Iaque
Umas das mais curiosas expressões que aprendi nos blogs da vida é “Yak Shaving”. A correspondente em português seria “Tosar o Iaque”. Reproduzi acima a melhor definição que encontrei na Internet. Também copiei trecho do arquivo onde vi estampada pela primeira vez a tal expressão. Não vou me dar ao trabalho de traduzir.