A quick bonus post today, I’m enjoying writing long-form posts weekly, but I wanted to sneak in a little one, enjoy.
Yaks
You know all those seemingly meaningless tasks you need to do, to cover come short-term problems, just so you can eventually get to the bigger problem and start solving it?
Maybe it’s the test environment you need to build by hand, so you can install your system under test, to then actually start testing a build. The goal isn’t to build a test environment, it’s to test the software, or better to ship working software.
Or you may find yourself completing some less-useful tasks, as procrastination, so you can put off that big important task a little longer (like writing this blog post, Ben….).
You can describe this as Yak Shaving, a term based off an episode of a 1990’s TV show, Ren and Stimpy. You can read more about the etymology here.
How many have you shaved?
So, how many Yaks have you shaved this week? Does it feel like you’re always shaving Yaks, and never get time to get into the meat of the problem?
I’d leave to hear from you, your opinion on Yak Shaving, and what you might do about it.
You can get in touch with me on the socials, start the conversations “Yakety yak”, or don’t, it’s up to you:
Twitter: FullSnackTester
Blue Sky: FullSnackTester
LinkedIn: dowenb
Mastodon: FullSnackTester
Hero image: Photo by Kelly, via Pexels.com