Nope, I’m not considering a move into working with Himalayan livestock, though one of my favourite books is about the Himalayas, so maybe…

Nope, these yaks I’m talking about are metaphorical. ‘Shaving the yak’ is an idea I came across recently, and I think it’s a powerful one. The idea is to avoid ’shaving the yak’, to explain yak shaving I will quote the The Jargon Lexicon:

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.

We know how it goes. First you decide on a course of action to reach a given goal. Then as you work towards the goal you come across lots of fiddly sub-steps that you need to complete before actually achieving the goal. But you don’t reconsider your course, you already decided on that right, nope you just keep right on fighting on along your chosen path. The idea is that if you’re working through the process you decided on and realise that shaving the yak is the necessary next step then maybe you need a new course.

Of course there is the related but entirely positive concept of llama shaving (as I’ll call it). That is the idea that you know that the easiest way to achieve your goal isn’t through shaving the llama. But llama shaving is something you’ve been meaning to learn for a while and right now seems like a great opportunity to give it a try. So that’s just fine, a great way to learn new stuff not a sink for our valuable time like the problematic yak.

This is one of those simple to understand, not-so-simple to live by ideas. It’s certainly one I could benefit from keeping in mind from time to time.

See: Joi Ito, Alexandra Samuel