Where it sits
It feels exactly like the left-hand pole and is in fact the right-hand one.
Tell it apart
| Aspect | Yak shaving | Procrastination |
|---|---|---|
| Blocks the real task | Genuinely | No |
| Avoidable | No | Yes |
| Looks identical from outside | Yes | Yes |
| Ends | Eventually | When you decide |
Procrastination is doing something else INSTEAD. Yak shaving is doing something else BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO. The sub-tasks genuinely block the main task — they just look absurd from outside, and increasingly absurd from inside.
What it doesn't mean
The canonical definition specifies a REAL dependency chain: 'a stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you're supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you're doing to the original meta-task'. The link is real. It is just long.
It has a named coiner (Carlin Vieri), a named institution (the MIT AI Lab), a dating window (1993 to 1998), and a named cartoon source (a 1991 episode). Very few pieces of internet vocabulary are this well documented.
What it really means
You sat down to fix one thing. It is now four hours later and you are shaving a yak.
The canonical MIT definition is precise about what separates this from simply wasting time. It describes a stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you're supposed to be working on — and then adds the crucial clause: but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you're doing to the original meta-task.
Twelve. The number is a joke, and it is also the whole definition. The connection is real. Every step genuinely blocks the one before it. It is just that after about the fourth link, nobody watching would believe you, and after about the eighth, you barely believe yourself.
Which is why the distinction from procrastination matters, and why it is so hard to make in the moment. Procrastination is doing something else instead. Yak shaving is doing something else because you cannot do the thing yet. From the outside they are indistinguishable. From the inside, they feel almost identical too — the same guilt, the same drift, the same sense that this is not what the day was for.
The difference is only visible backwards. If you can trace an unbroken chain from the yak to the task, you were unblocking. If any link is and then I checked something, you were not.
The provenance is unusually well documented for internet vocabulary: coined by Carlin Vieri at the MIT AI Lab between 1993 and 1998, written up on 11 February 2000, and named after a fictional holiday from a 1991 cartoon episode in which a shaven yak floats past in an enchanted canoe.
There is no deeper reason for the yak. The absence of a reason is the reason — the name is as arbitrary as the fourth task on the chain, which is exactly the feeling it was coined to describe.
Where it comes from
a fictional holiday from a 1991 cartoon episode, in which a shaven yak floats by in an enchanted canoe
The absurdity is the point — it was named after a cartoon joke, not after any metaphor of labour.
- 1991
The cartoon episode featuring the fictional Yak Shaving Day airs.
- 11 February 2000
An MIT lab bulletin publishes the canonical definition and credits Carlin Vieri with inventing the term.
In real life
- To fix one typo on the website you have to log in to the server, which needs a password reset, which needs the authenticator app, which needs a phone update — two hours later, you are still shaving the yak.
- You want to hang a picture, but the drill battery is flat, the charger is in the shed, and the shed key has gone missing.
- 'Did you finish the report?' 'No. To make one chart I had to update the spreadsheet software, which needed a new operating system, which needed me to free up disk space…'
Questions
Q01Who coined yak shaving?
Carlin Vieri, at the MIT AI Lab, sometime between 1993 and 1998. The canonical write-up is dated 11 February 2000.
Q02Why a yak?
From the fictional 'Yak Shaving Day' holiday in a 1991 cartoon episode, in which a shaven yak floats past in an enchanted canoe. There is no deeper reason, and the lack of one is the joke.
Q03Is it the same as procrastination?
No. The sub-tasks genuinely block the main task. Procrastination is doing something else instead; yak shaving is doing something else because you cannot do the thing yet.
Sources
- Wiktionary — yak shaving.
- GSB (Girl Scout Benefit) announcement, 11 February 2000 — MIT CSAIL archive.