yak shaving

[Mark A Mandel]

A neologism, nonce term, in-group slang... but useful!
        >>>

You see, yak shaving is what you are doing when you're doing some
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.
        <<<

That's an extract from the text at the following URL that a friend
passed on to me:

        http://www.ai.mit.edu/lab/gsb/gsb-archive/gsb2000-02-11.html

-- Mark A. Mandel