Yak shaving is this:  You start to write code, but realize you need to update your IDE. The update requires a newer OS version, which requires backing up your data first, but your backup drive is full, so you need to clean it up... and suddenly you're organizing old photos instead of coding. Yak shaving is the extreme of being stuck in [[View from the ninth avenue and life's subroutines|life's subroutines]]. To stop shaving the yak, you must first notice that you're shaving the yak. That means jumping out of your current frame of reference, [[Jootsing|which is hard]]. Then you have to disengage, and look for where in your series of decisions you went wrong. #published 2025-02-02